Question about fps from new user

[Rick70]

Hi All-

I am actually not an official user of BI yet as I am evaluating it to see how it works. I am on the latest version of BI5.

I have run into the following question and wonder if anyone has any insights:

In the documentation it is recommended to limit frame rates to conserve CPU and other resources. I have a camera on my roof that isn't very exciting so I have gone into Cam Settings/Video/Max Frame Rate and set it to 2 fps. After I confirm out of the dialog box I open Status/Cameras and it is showing me 5fps for this cam, and when I go back into the config it has moved the value to 5. I repeat the process and sometimes it shows me 5fps, and other times maybe 6fps. Given this it seems like the setting is a recommendation rather than a hard limit? The camera is an Arecont and I am using the Arecont driver with RTSP & h.264- there is no way to limit the fps at the camera.

Overall I like the software and will likely be buying it at the end of the demo period. Great forum, btw.

Thanks,

Rick

 

[sebastiantombs]

Frame rates are set by the camera itself, not by BI. BI can only "receive" what it is sent in terms of frame, bit and iframe rates.

 

[SouthernYankee]

For a security, surveillance system you need between 8 and 15 FPS. More than 15 FPS is a waste of network, cpu and disk space. The Iframe value should be 1 to 2 times the frame rate. So a frame rate of 10 FPS would have a Iframe value of 10 or 20.

Blue Iris does not set values in the camera. Except for the PTZ functions.

 

[Rick70]

Frame rates are set by the camera itself, not by BI. BI can only "receive" what it is sent in terms of frame, bit and iframe rates.

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree that a camera will have a hard limit on fps based on its processor, compression, etc. In my admittedly very limited experience it seems it is possible to further limit the fps at the NVR/VMS for recording and for live view. The BI documentation suggests limiting live view fps to 1 and recording fps to 15 or lower. I found the live view switch and it works as expected, but I can't seem to get the recording fps setting to hold, hence my post. Maybe it is a bug in the software?

 

[sebastiantombs]

No, not a bug at all. BI records what it receives, thankfully, preserving full motion for future reference. The best way to limit CPU load is to use substreams from the cameras for "live view". Unfortunately, that feature is not available in the demo mode of BI.

 

[th182]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree that a camera will have a hard limit on fps based on its processor, compression, etc. In my admittedly very limited experience it seems it is possible to further limit the fps at the NVR/VMS for recording and for live view. The BI documentation suggests limiting live view fps to 1 and recording fps to 15 or lower. I found the live view switch and it works as expected, but I can't seem to get the recording fps setting to hold, hence my post. Maybe it is a bug in the software?

To change the cameras FPS you have to log directly into the cameras web interface and change it there.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[fenderman]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree that a camera will have a hard limit on fps based on its processor, compression, etc. In my admittedly very limited experience it seems it is possible to further limit the fps at the NVR/VMS for recording and for live view. The BI documentation suggests limiting live view fps to 1 and recording fps to 15 or lower. I found the live view switch and it works as expected, but I can't seem to get the recording fps setting to hold, hence my post. Maybe it is a bug in the software?

Again, its not a bug. The software will not toss frames as this will require way more processing power than writing the frames to disk. Limiting frame rates is no longer needed for most setups as the new substream function significantly reduces CPU consumption.
You can force the software to do this with the alt/timelapse function but it will have the opposite affect - increasing cpu.

 

[looney2ns]

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I agree that a camera will have a hard limit on fps based on its processor, compression, etc. In my admittedly very limited experience it seems it is possible to further limit the fps at the NVR/VMS for recording and for live view. The BI documentation suggests limiting live view fps to 1 and recording fps to 15 or lower. I found the live view switch and it works as expected, but I can't seem to get the recording fps setting to hold, hence my post. Maybe it is a bug in the software?

No, as others have said, you must change the FPS in the camera's setup it's self. NOT in BI.