Several Question related to Quality, recording and SMS service

[TLR]

Hello all, a couple of weeks ago finally installed a 13 camera Dahua system I picked up from Andy with a BI server made from a spare Win 10 i7 box I had around. Most everything is great. The system is settled in at around 50% CPU load . The system is up and running, recording, etc. Now I am into the hard part of tweaking and have a few questions that I have not been able to determine the answers so asking the community.

1: Main viewing station is a 43" monitor using a Raspberry PI viewing the streams through the BI Webservice. It works but the quality of the video is low. Looking at it the quality is low on my computer monitor on the BI server as well. It is just as it is smaller, it is less noticeable. I found the setting in the webserver options that adjusts compression but that does not seem to make a difference. Where can I adjust what is used for streaming?

2: I have had a hard time getting BI to store more than 7 days. I have the database, store, and new all set to 21 days as I have plenty of storage but no matter what I am dropping after 7 days. Is there another setting someplace that has higher priority?

3: I have been playing with mail and sms texting when motion is detected. email is fine. Get the email and a still picture. On SMS I get the text but all of a sudden I lost the picture. I cannot figure out what I did to block it. I have not changed antivirus, firewall rules, etc. But obviously something has changed. Any suggestions where to look.

Thanks for any suggestions. If needed to answer any of the above, I am running:
Qty 3 - IPC-HDW5831R-ZE
Qty 2 - IPC-HDBW4231F-AS
Qty 1 - IPC-HDW5431R-ZE
Qty 7 - ipc-hdw2231r-zs


Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[fenderman]

Hello all, a couple of weeks ago finally installed a 13 camera Dahua system I picked up from Andy with a BI server made from a spare Win 10 i7 box I had around. Most everything is great. The system is settled in at around 50% CPU load . The system is up and running, recording, etc. Now I am into the hard part of tweaking and have a few questions that I have not been able to determine the answers so asking the community.

1: Main viewing station is a 43" monitor using a Raspberry PI viewing the streams through the BI Webservice. It works but the quality of the video is low. Looking at it the quality is low on my computer monitor on the BI server as well. It is just as it is smaller, it is less noticeable. I found the setting in the webserver options that adjusts compression but that does not seem to make a difference. Where can I adjust what is used for streaming?

2: I have had a hard time getting BI to store more than 7 days. I have the database, store, and new all set to 21 days as I have plenty of storage but no matter what I am dropping after 7 days. Is there another setting someplace that has higher priority?

3: I have been playing with mail and sms texting when motion is detected. email is fine. Get the email and a still picture. On SMS I get the text but all of a sudden I lost the picture. I cannot figure out what I did to block it. I have not changed antivirus, firewall rules, etc. But obviously something has changed. Any suggestions where to look.

Thanks for any suggestions. If needed to answer any of the above, I am running:
Qty 3 - IPC-HDW5831R-ZE
Qty 2 - IPC-HDBW4231F-AS
Qty 1 - IPC-HDW5431R-ZE
Qty 7 - ipc-hdw2231r-zs


Thanks for any suggestions.

1- uncheck limit bitrate in the webserver settings for profile 0. To the left of the ptz controls select the all camera group then adjust resolution.
2-Uncheck any and all storage settings that limit by day. You need to adjust the SIZE limit. Leave free space make sure not to over allocate.
3- check alert settings.

 

[SouthernYankee]

2. It is strongly recommended to not use time to save video. Use only space.

a) are you continuous recording on all camera or only motion / trigger ?
b) provided a screen shot the the status (three bar button) clip storage.
c) provided screen shot of option (gear button) clips and archiving, the three folders
d) only allocate 95% of the total free disk space to BI, do not over allocate

Continuous storage needed for 15 fps, 1080P for 21 days for 11 cameras is more than 8 TB.

 

[TLR]

1- uncheck limit bitrate in the webserver settings for profile 0. To the left of the ptz controls select the all camera group then adjust resolution.
2-Uncheck any and all storage settings that limit by day. You need to adjust the SIZE limit. Leave free space make sure not to over allocate.
3- check alert settings.

Thanks Fenderman -
1: I found the "limit bitrate" in the webserver/advanced/encoder options and removed limit bitrate but I am a little confused on the second part. The only PZT controls I am aware of is in the individual camera settings. The tab left of PZT/Controls is Schedule but I do not see something like all camera.

2: OK I have unchecked day and now realize it seems you set the size per folder. Here is how it is set.
New - 1000GB
Stored - 2000GB
Alerts - 50GB

New and Stored are going to a dedicated 4TB WD Purple drive. Alerts go to C: What I do not understand is the relationship between new and stored. I move new to stored but not sure the balance I should have between new and stored? I record on trigger for the vast majority of cameras. I have an 8MB and 2- 2MB on continuous record for now as I need to work to see if I can reliably mask out some areas as I have a lot of vegetation creating shadows on walkways that trigger the cameras continuously so I might as well just set them to continuous. But want to move especially the 8MB to trigger if possible. But that is another day. Right now the drive is practically empty.

3: In the alert settings I have "Attach current image" checked with 50% quality. Just as it is in the email config. The message transmits but no attachment so I figure something is stripping it but no idea what.

 

[TLR]

2. It is strongly recommended to not use time to save video. Use only space.

a) are you continuous recording on all camera or only motion / trigger ?
b) provided a screen shot the the status (three bar button) clip storage.
c) provided screen shot of option (gear button) clips and archiving, the three folders
d) only allocate 95% of the total free disk space to BI, do not over allocate

Continuous storage needed for 15 fps, 1080P for 21 days for 11 cameras is more than 8 TB.

Thanks Southern Yankee - Just replied to Fenderman with most of the above. The clip storage is showing for D:/ 103G of 3.63T used and New, Stored is 97.3G used of 2.92T. Now I just recently changed the values so lets see. Are changes dynamic/automatic or do I need to restart the Service?

 

[SouthernYankee]

If new and stored folders are on the same drive, there is no need for the stored folder, leave the videos in the new folder, just set delete from new folder. Set the new folder size to 3600 gb most of the WD 4tb drive.

There is no need to "move" files around, they really are not going anywhere.

 

[TLR]

If new and stored folders are on the same drive, there is no need for the stored folder, leave the videos in the new folder, just set delete from new folder. Set the new folder size to 3600 gb most of the WD 4tb drive.
There is no need to "move" files around, they really are not going anywhere.

OK that would make sense. Now let me ask a follow-on question. I have a 15TB NAS box for other purposes. Not that I am going to but if I leave NEW at 3600gb so most of the clips are local and move overage to my NAS to reach a longer storage time is there any detriment other than if I pull some very old video it may be slow? Just trying to understand how things work.

 

[SouthernYankee]

Setting up the stored folder on the Nas can work. It is a pain to get the user security on the Nas, set so that the BI service can write to it.

There are forum post on how to set this up correctly, search.
Note, I do not use a Nas so I can not help.

 

[TLR]

ok been playing and now on item one above (quality on monitor) and I now understand Fenderman's second instruction about the PZT control. It is on the client not the server. Duh. I had the screen in full screen so did not see the controls. I can adjust up to 4k. So when I cycle full screen now all the pictures look great and I can see where if I drop the resolution it craps out and improves if I increase. So full screen I am great. In mosaic however is where things get problematic. The wife like the mosaic, seeing all cameras at once but no matter the resolution setting after about 720p there is no effect on quality. Even on the 8M cameras. Is there a max setting on the Webserver someplace that limits the mosaic quality? I followed the wiki on the setup. I will try a lower quality monitor ( I am running this on a 4K monitor and since it is not running in native mode maybe that is having an impact). What else am I missing.

Thanks to Fenderman and SouthernYankee for the responses with item 2. Seems I am pushing past a week now so hopefully that is fixed.
Still cant get photos on SMS text so will keep playing as something is blocking them I guess.

Appreciate the help on this site.