Running Great Until Export

S

Steven609554

n3wb
Dec 24, 2019
3
2
Ohio
Good day!
Long time reader, occasional commenter but first-time poster. Thank you all for creating such a nice resource!

I do WiFi installs and networks etc for a living and have about a dozen BI setups as an add-on for some of my existing clients.
Familiar with Milestone as well. Those are all fine.
My personal setup is driving me nuts and I can't figure it out after hours or research and actually trying to! : )

17 cameras, mix of Dahua and Ubiquiti of various makes and models, and mix of constant and motion recording.
CPU utilization sits around 35% with BI taking 7 GB of RAM. Disk utilization around 8-10%
Dedicated computer is cobbled together with leftover and free parts but has been in use for years.
i7-3770s, 16GB RAM, OS and alerts on SSD, recordings on WD purples.

The problem is when I try to export a file the CPU utilization jumps to 99%.
Just tried to export a short clip from a 2mp camera. Ended up being 1.5mb in size but took over five minutes.
After export, back to 30s.

I'm also seeing a similar aggravation with playback in general but nothing unusable.
I've read through the optimization guide as I normally follow those procedures but can't get this figured out.

I have to be missing something obvious. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thank you in advance.
 
The export requires heavy CPU use for encoding the video. With your processor, the first thing to do is all of the optimize steps listed in the WiKi if you haven't already done that. Next utilize substreams for the cameras. Substreams should bring your CPU utilization down for the current 35% level to, probably, around 10%. Use the lowest resoltuion possible for the substreams. The main streams, full resolutions, are recorded and used for single camera viewing or playback. The substreams are used for the main console display of multiple cameras.
 
  • Like
Reactions: looney2ns
Thanks for the response. I'm using sub stream on most and can easily drop below 30s cutting fps etc.
Guess I wasn't realizing the encoding was that CPU intensive.
I know the exports and encoding eat cpu cycles but just seemed excessive for the duration and resolution.
 
Out of curiosity, what's the frame and but rates on your substreams? That processor, being a gen 3, is kind of "long in the tooth" so it will have problems when hit with heavier loads.
 
  • Like
Reactions: looney2ns
As above, you've got 17 cameras on a i7-3770s. Even at low rates that's still a bunch and the only reason that it's at 35% now is that you're using substreams and, I'm assuming, have done other optimizations. A lot of that goes away when you do the encoding still with the rest of the load on the processor.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Steven609554 and looney2ns
Thank you all again.

Without a page-long response, the sub-streams are essentially medium settings with low to medium frame rates.
I'm not interested in tweaking additionally to get under 30%.
There just comes a time to upgrade.

I'm thinking the bottom line here is that I've done a good job optimizing it to sit at 30s while recording but I've underestimated the CPU demands of exporting.

Time to see what I can dig up.
It's the old adage of the cobblers kids have no shoes.
Think I have a used i5-8500 around here. Boards are cheap enough.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: sebastiantombs and Mike A.
This seems to apply to your issue when exporting, I didn't see if you mentioned if you were running BI v4 or v5, but I would imagine they would be the same. Did you apply the inactive profile to turn off the live view when you are exporting video clips? If this is only during exporting, try this first.

You didn't mention the MP of the cameras. I was using an I7 3770k until the end of support for Windows 7 gave me an excuse to build a new BI dedicated PC running Windows 10. That CPU, while older and missing technologies, and missing security updates that a newer CPU would mitigate, is still somewhat viable depending on your settings. But this depends on your usage case, if you're running 17 cameras at 8MP 30FPS, you're going to see issues no matter the CPU. I think there are a lot of people here that are running refurbished business class computers with a 3rd-6th gen Intel CPU, and with proper optimization of Blue Iris and the computer, are running fine. There is much information in the Wiki, 2 or 3 Youtube producers that have videos broken into tutorial segments on each feature, many amazingly detailed posts by the forum standard bearers, and the new Friday webinar series that can also be good information.

 
bp2008, sidebar question but topic related: I have BI v4, and I'm pretty sure BI v5 doesn't have this (yet), but is there a way to clip video and export as BVR file to retain digital zoom on the saved clip when played back in BI?
If no, how would one go about requesting to add a feature that will allow clip and option to export as BVR file, in lieu of .avi or .mp4?
 
Can you educate me on how this is done?
Export to .avi, no re-encode, choose Blue Iris software as the playback program.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom