Reset and Start Over with BlueIris

J

JoshFink

Young grasshopper
Apr 19, 2015
56
18
Hi folks, I've had an installation for many years. Things haven't been working well for a while and what I'd really like to do is delete BlueIris, reinstall, and start over.

Is there a guide that I'm missing on the best way to do that? If so, can you point me to that?

My first inclination would be stop the service, uninstall, delete the service (if it doesn't happen automatically), delete the folders, delete the registry key that everything is under, and then reboot, and reinstall.

Is this correct or am I missing some steps?

Thanks for the help.
 
That looks good mostly.

First make a registry backup. It is sufficient to just export HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Perspective Software.

Make sure you have your license key available for the reinstall.

Also push the Deactivate button in Blue Iris Settings > About. I'm not sure if that actually contacts their registration service or not, but in case it does it may help you avoid any issues reactivating. If you get told your key has been activated too many times you need to contact Blue Iris support via email to have it reset.
 
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Also the reboot is not actually necessary for any technical reason I can think of. Once Blue Iris is not running, and you've deleted its registry and file data, there's nothing left belonging to Blue Iris to clear with a reboot. But as a general troubleshooting step when things haven't been behaving properly, it certainly does not hurt.
 
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Thanks. I appreciate the reply.

I figured the reboot wasn't necessary, but it doesn't hurt and helps me believe that at least something isn’t stuck.

We’ll see how it goes. Most likely i’ll wait until the morning.
 
Just to add to what bp2008 said "......Make sure you have your license key available for the reinstall."

You can also go to BI's "Settings" => "About", click on "Email Support" and it will copy your info, including your license key, to the clipboard. Open Notepad, paste that into a text file and save it somewhere like a flash drive. Makes it easy to copy/paste that key with no errors when asked for it on the new machine. :cool:

Also, be sure to re-install the version that was made before the end of your maintenance period.
 
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Also, depending on the last time you renewed your support (aka, the last time you received a new key). Your key might not work with the latest release of BI. If this is the case DON'T PANIC. Simply download the installer for version of BI you are currently running.
 
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SpacemanSpiff said:
Also, depending on the last time you renewed your support (aka, the last time you received a new key). Your key might not work with the latest release of BI. If this is the case DON'T PANIC. Simply download the installer for version of BI you are currently running.
Click to expand...
That's what I was trying to say above also with "Also, be sure to re-install the version that was made before the end of your maintenance period" but you said it better.

By saving the "Email Support" text, he'll know the version. I once didn't do all that Iand had no idea what my version was before I re-installed BI.
 
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SpacemanSpiff said:
Also, depending on the last time you renewed your support (aka, the last time you received a new key). Your key might not work with the latest release of BI. If this is the case DON'T PANIC. Simply download the installer for version of BI you are currently running.
Click to expand...
Thanks.. I renewed support yesterday and installed the latest version.
 
I'll let you all know how it goes. I'm guessing that when I initially set it up, maybe 2015ish, that I set it up how I thought was best and things have changed but I hadn't changed with it. I'm going to try to glean most of the best practices and go from there. I probably need to reconfigure my cameras as well, but we will see.

Thanks
 
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Bob Ebaugh said:
I'm also following this thread. About to migrate my system to a PC that supports Win11.

What is the purpose of the registry backup @bp2008 mentioned? Is that different from the Import and Export settings buttons on the Blue Iris About page?
Click to expand...

A backup is mainly important in case you discover later you forgot something that was in your old Blue Iris configuration. It includes your Blue Iris license key, and all settings, such as user names and passwords, email/ftp configurations, and that sort of thing. Not to mention if you changed your mind and just wanted to go back to exactly how things used to be, having a full registry backup makes that easy.

When Blue iris exports settings, it isn't nearly as human-readable as a backup made by exporting via regedit. This makes a regedit backup much more useful in case you need to find one bit of lost information without having to restore the entire backup.
 
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Thanks for the info! I will get one of those backups made and stored, perhaps more for posterity since I will have both systems available during the transition. Maybe longer, what good is a 4th gen system these days?
 
I'm glad I ran across this thread. I've been relucantly mulling over the idea of doing a complete removal and reinstall of Blue Iris to see if it gets rid of the numerous issues I see any time I try to upgrade to a release higher than 5.7.8.3.

Here are just a few of the weirdnesses I've seen on newer releases:
  • Dramatically higher CPU utilization (60+% vs 6% on my i7-13700K)
  • Camera FPS dropping down to the low single digits during multiple simultaneous alerts
  • CPAI canceling alerts because the main and substreams are out of sync
  • 99-second freeze in the video of one or more triggered cameras when multiple cameras are triggered in a short period of time
Although I've seen a few reports from people of one or more of these behaviors, there almost has to be something specific to my environment that is causing the issues,
Ken has tried to investigate these, but can't reproduce them.

Edit: See Reply #20 for the steps I'd take if I decided to do another clean install.

My current plan is to do the following:
  1. Export all Blue Iris registry settings - Blue Iris Settings> Shift-click Export Settings (Thanks for the tip @jaydeel )
  2. Save support data - Blue Iris Settings>Get Support>Email Support>Copy, then paste in Notepad and save.
  3. Export each of my 25 cameras individually - Camera Settings>Export... (the shift-click works here as well)
  4. Save camera and group info - Blue Iris>Status>Cameras>Export>Include login details?>Yes
  5. Screenshot all of my Blue Iris settings - Blue Iris Settings>(each tab and sub settings as needed)
  6. Screenshot my various camera group layouts with layout mode active
  7. Deactivate my license - Blue Iris Settings>Registration>Deactivate
  8. Uninstall Blue Iris.
  9. Delete C:\Program Files\Blue Iris 5
  10. Delete C:\ProgramData\Blue Iris
  11. Use the registry editor to delete the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Perspective Software\Blue Iris
  12. Reboot
  13. Install latest stable release and activate it
I'm then somewhat torn between adding every camera and configuring it from scratch, or importing the cameras.
In my case I think it makes sense to import the cameras.
If I import the cameras I won't truely have a "clean install", but recreating 25 cameras by hand is going to take a lot of work.
Importing cameras will take minutes instead of hours or days, and if my problems go away I'll know it was someting with Blue Iris itself, and not the result of camera configuration(s).
Camera settings are held under their own set of registry subkeys under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Perspective Software\Blue Iris\Cameras\<Camera Name>, so I don't think importing the cameras is going to somehow "pollute" Blue Iris itself.
If the problems don't go away, I would think I could always delete and add from scratch each of the cameras one by one, and then if the problems dissapear I would know they were somehow caused by something in my camera settings. I could even test for the issues after recreating a batch of 2-3 cameras and see if the probems still exist, and possibly narrow it down to a specific camera or set of camera settings.
 
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Just in case you haven't found this, it's a whole lot easier to add cameras if you use the "sync" feature for Trigger, Alert, and Record. It probably doesn't work for everybody. For me, it does, having one "master" camera, and syncing the others off of it. I think there is a risk of importing because I've been hooked a few times by something in a camera configuration being wrong, but not showing up in the UI, with the fix being to delete and recreate the camera. I'm realizing that BI is actually fairly easy once you learn most of it, but getting there can be pretty painful. I also suggest you get it all set up and running well before adding CPAI, and make a backup at that point. I tried CPAI, found it to be more trouble than benefit, and rebuilt from scratch without it. The system is stable enough now that I might someday consider giving up the NVR that runs in parallel. I'm not meaning to bash CPAI. It's just too immature for somebody like me who just wants the system to work without a lot of hassles. Maybe like in years past when I'd like to tinker with the car, and see the unwanted side effects as a challenge. Now I just want the darn thing to get me from point to point with no hassles.
 
@digger11 I only have 6 cameras, not all with the same settings, but probably pretty standardized camera settings in most cases. My customization is trigger zones and actions. Some of the triggers interface to Shelly controlled lights in lieu of motion sensors. All of this came over without any changes. The Blue Iris part was completely painless, I spent more time worrying about it than getting it working.

I used the BlueIris export and import button, I don't remember if there is a partial import, I wanted everything. Somewhere I read and followed the advice to make sure the version available for download on the Blue Iris website was the same version running on the old system before saving the settings. The only component that didn't convert in the application itself was related to running BI as a service. I use "local_console", and I'm not sure that is really recommended anymore (or if ever). But resetting those settings for "local_console" and it all worked on the new PC.

Deactivation isn't technically required. The new PC and the old will both run at the same time. The new one has a "demo" banner on every camera. I just turned off the old system, rebooted the new one and fed it the license key. Since you probably have a bigger drive for video storage, you probably need to adjust those settings. That's all I remember.

I did have other TCP/IP issues getting remote access to work. But those were PC firewall and router related. I have 2 subnets, one isolated to the cameras, one for most everything else. This was really mostly getting the 2 ethernet interfaces, switch cables to the right port, matching the hard IP address on the PC, and remembering to omit the gateway address for the camera network card to prevent routing via the PC. Nothing major, but had to relearn/fix the needed settings.

Good luck! Hope it goes as smoothly for you.
 
Only as an example, this is what the normal performance looks like for my system. It's only the BI task, no remote or local user logged in. I have done all the direct to disk optimizations shown elsewhere on this forum. The ethernet graphs misleading...the BI network is a steady 32 Mbps matching the streaming rate from my cameras. The WAN network is basically 0.

I imagine the only substantial difference might be my network segmentation. This is purposeful. I can have 5 people streaming Netflix (or downloading Apple/Windows updates) on my regular network, and the BI PC will never see anything or compete for resources beyond the layer 2 switch...which for all intents and purposes is dedicated to BI. Likewise, an issue on the BI network won't impact the normal network. It also keeps the cameras from phoning home...but that concern is likely overblown. All of this assumes you don't make regular use of the remote or local consoles. I go weeks between looking, I live in a city and there are way too many triggers to waste time looking at everyone of them, and not really a good way to keep that from happening. But I want the data in case it every needs to be there.

This may or may not be related to your issues. In this configuration everything is basically idling along and there are never dropped or delayed packets.

BTW this is not really my design, it was in the material I found here years ago when I first established the system and happened to be redesigning the network at the same time to use UniFi equipment. Not unique to Ubiquity UniFi, many others can be configured the same.



Screenshot 2024-11-16 154648.png
 
I took the plunge and uninstalled Blue Iris and wiped out the related directories and registry settings before installing the latest version.
Fingers crossed, but so far it seems to have eliminated the issues I was seeing before when trying to upgrade to releases newer than 5.7.8.3.

Below I’ll list the steps I took and will add a couple of steps I wish I had taken to try to avoid the 2.5 hour database rebuild that I endured after the install. Those steps will be in red.
  1. Download the full install file for the Blue Iris release you wish to install. Full install files are usually 150MB+, update files are more typically ~50MB.
    If your software support is current you can download the latest release from the official download page Home - Blue Iris Software.
    If software support has expired, either renew your support or find a full install file for a release that you are entitled to.
  2. Export all Blue Iris registry settings - Blue Iris Settings>Export Settings
    (I saved both a normal export, and using a shift-click of the Export Settings button a human-readable version. Thanks for the tip @jaydeel )
  3. Save support data - Blue Iris Settings>Get Support>Email Support>Copy, then paste in Notepad and save.
  4. Export each of your individual cameras - Camera Settings>Export... (the shift-click works here as well)
  5. Save camera and group info - Blue Iris>Status>Cameras>Export>Include login details?>Yes
  6. Screenshot all Blue Iris settings - Blue Iris Settings>(each tab and sub settings as needed)
  7. Screenshot any camera group layouts you want to recreate with layout mode active
  8. Uninstall Blue Iris.
  9. Delete C:\Program Files\Blue Iris 5
  10. Delete C:\ProgramData\Blue Iris
  11. Use the registry editor to delete the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Perspective Software\Blue Iris
  12. Reboot
  13. Unless your storage configuration is completely stock, with db, New, Stored, and Alerts residing under C:\BlueIris, preserve your existing database and directories by renaming C:\BlueIris to C:\OldBlueIris.
  14. Install Blue Iris using the full install file and activate it with your license key displayed in the support data saved in step 3.
  15. Launch Blue Iris.
  16. Apply any changes needed to the configuration of the Settings>About tab, referring to the screenshots taken in step 6.
  17. Apply any changes needed to the configuration of the Settings>Web server tab, referring to the screenshots taken in step 6.
  18. Apply any changes needed to the configuration of the Settings>Startup tab, referring to the screenshots taken in step 6.
  19. Apply any changes needed to the configuration of the Settings>Storage tab, referring to the screenshots taken in step 6.
  20. Shut down Blue Iris.
  21. Delete the C:\BlueIris directory that was created by the new installation.
  22. Rename C:\OldBlueIris to C:\BlueIris.
  23. Start Blue Iris (or the Blue Iris service if set to run as a service in step 18).
  24. Apply any changes needed to the remaining tabs under Settings, again referring to the screenshots taken in step 6.
  25. Add each of your cameras one by one, importing the exported settings saved in step 4.
    If you don't want to import and want to add the cameras by hand, the CSV file from step 5 will give you the name, IP, username, password, and group info for all of your cameras.
  26. Adjust camera group layouts if desired, referring to screenshots from step 7.
 
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