Recordings stutter

tuvow

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I’m new to Blue Iris and just set up the system with 7 cameras (5x 1.3mp, 1x 2MP and 1x 4MP 5442T-ZE). All cameras are setup with the following settings:

  • H264, highest quality setting
  • Bitrate of 2048 kbps for the low res cameras, 3072 kbps for the 2MP camera and 8192 kbps for the 4MP camera
  • 25 fps and I-frame interval 25

In BI, direct-to-disk recording and hardware acceleration (Intel+VPP) is enabled. It’s a i5-12400 machine with 16GB of ram. Database is on SSD and recordings to a WD Purple Pro disk. All cameras are set to record continuously.

When I view the live streams I haven’t noticed any stutters, but most of the alert videos have stutters (sometimes several seconds long).

I’m specifically looking at the 5442 cam that triggers based on the Dahua smart detection. However, when I started looking into the issue I have also noticed stutters in the recordings of other cameras at the same time as the alert was triggered at the 5442 cam. I have also noticed random stutters in the recordings at other times, but I have not been able to find a pattern yet. I have also monitored CPU, RAM and HDD usage but most of the time CPU load is 5% or less and never more than 25%. RAM hovers around 50% and HDD load is also just a few %. I don’t see any packet loss or ping spikes either.

Does anyone have any idea what might be the issue here?
 

fenderman

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Doesn't use vpp. Just set regular hardware acceleration. Ensure you are not using smart codec in the camera. Ensure that cameras and PC are connected via the same switch or a switches connect to each other and not passing the router. Exclude bi program and storeage from antivirus.
 

tuvow

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Thank you for the tips and suggestions. I have tried/investigated the following:

Intel VPP
I have set hardware acceleration to "Intel" (thus disabling VPP).

Camera settings
The cameras use regular H264 without any smart codecs. Bitrate is set to CBR 8192 for 4MP, 2048 for the 1.2MP cameras and 3072 for the 2MP camera. I have tried setting all cameras to 15 FPS with a i-frame interval of 15, including substreams.

Antivirus
The PC came preinstalled with McAfee, I have uninstalled that now so I'm sure it won't interfear. In Windows Defender I have excluded the BI folder and the hard drive that is used for storing all footage.

Networking
All cameras are connected to the same switch. Between this switch and the BI PC is another unmanaged 1 Gbit/s switch. Unfortunately, I cannot easily remove this additional switch. I think however it is unlikely that the stuttering is caused by network issues. The traffic doesn't pass any router and I would expect to see packet loss and/or high ping spikes when the video stutters, but I'm not seeing any of that.

Hard drive sounds
I have noticed that when I playback the recordings on the PC, usually when the video stutters I also hear the hard drive seeking. If I rewind the video 10 seconds and play it again, the video stutters again at the same moment and I again hear the hard drive seeking. Does this maybe ring a bell? It's a WD Purple Pro disk and I have run diagnostics through the Western Digital Dashboard program, it claims the drive is perfect condition.

Does anyone have any other suggestions how I might fix this problem? To be honest I'm getting close to the point of giving up on BI.
 

tuvow

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Two more thoughts:

If networking would be the issue, I would also expect the 6MB read buffer to "catch" any small intermittent network delays.

I have an example of a recording this morning where the video stutters several times or even just skips 10 seconds in a second or so (looking at the timestamping done by the camera) and I don't hear any weird hard drive seeking noises. So maybe it was just coincidence with some of the other examples.
 

tuvow

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And one more observation: if the video skips/stutters, it's happening with all cameras at that time.
 

tuvow

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I think I may have found the culprit. The PC is a brand-new machine, and I installed an additional NIC from TP-Link (TG-3468). Initially when I booted Windows for the first time, I noticed the entire system was freezing for several seconds every 10 seconds or so. I disabled the NIC in Windows' Device Management tool and the freezes stopped. This morning I physically removed the NIC from the machine and since then I haven't noticed any stutters in the video anymore. Apparently the NIC was still causing issues even though it was disabled in Windows' Device Management tool.
 
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