Should I upgrade my CPU?

[Johnman]

Hey guys
I have set up 8 cameras and put them all into Blue Iris now. Gone through this Wiki to optimize blue iris to use less CPU
The PC running this has the following hardware:
i5-3570k 3.40Ghz
12GB ram
Local SSD for DB
NAS drive on local network for clip storage
Windows 10 64bit latest updates
No GPU

So after optimizing it I got the CPU down to like 10% and 56% Ram usage ! which was pretty amazing

When I run the web interface however is sky-rockets to 100% (25% is the browser I was using chrome)

I want to run a remote monitor in the pantry room to always have all cameras showing which I can do this by running a HDMI over tcp/ip adapter
My original idea was to just run the remote monitor from the same PC thats running blue-iris but this really jumps up the CPU on it.
When I run the web interface from another PC and not the Blue Iris / NVR PC it runs at 80% constant.. Which is still too high to run 24/7











( ALso noticed disk is running at 99% but i get a warning DB may need repair)


Is there any other tricks I can do to get the CPU down a bit while having a constant stream showing of the web interface?

 

[TonyR]

Local SSD for DB
NAS drive on local network for clip storage

Just to clarify:
Is Window 10 and the Blue Iris program also on the SSD along with BI's db folder?

 

[Johnman]

Just to clarify:
Is Window 10 and the Blue Iris program also on the SSD along with BI's db folder?

Yes sir

I also also running a slightly old version of Blue Iris:

 

[TonyR]

Yes sir

I also also running a slightly old version of Blue Iris:

What's up with the attachment?

 

[fenderman]

This is occurring because you are using limit decoding without understanding how it works See the wiki on the subject. There are ways to mitigate the increase by telling Blue iris not to decode a remote viewing, But more importantly you generally shouldn’t be using a limit decoding.

You don’t tell us what your load is either. How many cameras what is the resolution and frame rates.

 

[Johnman]

This is occurring because you are using limit decoding without understanding how it works See the wiki on the subject. There are ways to mitigate the increase by telling Blue iris not to decode a remote viewing, But more importantly you generally shouldn’t be using a limit decoding.

You don’t tell us what your load is either. How many cameras what is the resolution and frame rates.

Thanks I thought id try it first and see what would happens.

I am using 8 cameras

all are brought down to 15 fps like it suggests in the wiki

one camera is 4k resolution

all the other cameras are 2.7k

 

[Johnman]

Ok so I have read the wiki section about the limit decoding and disabled this option in the All Cameras group:



I also went into each camera's config and make the i-frame level equal to the frame rate of each camera (15fps)

I gave my PC a reboot also.

When accessing the web interface from another PC it sits at about 70% consistently:


When I access the web interface from the Blue-Iris PC ( my ideal setup ) the CPU sits at 100% !

 

[samplenhold]

When I access the web interface from the Blue-Iris PC ( my ideal setup ) the CPU sits at 100% !

Why would you access UI3 from the BI PC? You already have BI running, just view it.

So right now I have 20 cameras, 18 2MP and 2 4MP running at 15FPS for a total of about 11700kB/s and 670 MP/s.

I have an i7-8700 3.2GHz with 32GB DDR4 3000 memory on a micro ATX motherboard. OS, BI and the BI DB is on an 256GB PCI-E drive. One EVGA GTX 1050 Ti graphics card for HA decoding. Video goes to two WD Purple 10TB drives. Snapshots, saved clips and other data goes to a WD Blue 500GB NAND SSD. Recording 24/7 direct-to-disc in BI format. I use UI3 on my office computer to view the BI feed. If need be, I use RDC to connect to the BI server from my office computer. Otherwise I go upstairs and log in to the BI computer.

Having said all of that, the BI CPU runs at about 16% with UI3 running in my office. With both UI3 and an RDC connection it runs about 22%. Memory tends to run flat at about 9GB in use (29%). The GPU runs at about 43%. Since the BI server has two NICs, the camera Ethernet runs about 2Mbps send and 96 Mbps receive. The normal LAN Ethernet runs at about 5 Mbps send and receive. The only things running on this BI PC is BI, Network Time Sync, and an antivirus.

This should give you an idea of what a system runs at.

 

[bp2008]

@Johnman Did you enable "Limit decoding" for all of your cameras under BI camera settings > Video tab? If you did this for all of them, along with the other settings changes you have described, then remote viewing should not cause such a large increase in CPU usage.

 

[bp2008]

I calculated your MP/s load as 553 MP/s (seven 4MP cams @ 15FPS + one 4K cam @ 15 FPS). This is definitely more than I would want to run on i5-3570K, but it should be manageable with a couple of cams (especially the 4K one) using Limit decoding. With all of the cams using Limit decoding as you have described, I would expect CPU usage to be under 25% even with one web interface open.

 

[fenderman]

Another point to consider. @bp2008 has done testing using dual channel memory instead of single and it shows a significant benefit. In the one system where i went to dual channel from single the cpu decrease was dramatic. You say you have 12gb, how is that broken down?

 

[Johnman]

Another point to consider. @bp2008 has done testing using dual channel memory instead of single and it shows a significant benefit. In the one system where i went to dual channel from single the cpu decrease was dramatic. You say you have 12gb, how is that broken down?

Single channel Fenderman. I might just buy 1 extra ram module and turn it into dual channel to see
It would not be an expensive thing to do

Why would you access UI3 from the BI PC? You already have BI running, just view it.

So right now I have 20 cameras, 18 2MP and 2 4MP running at 15FPS for a total of about 11700kB/s and 670 MP/s.

I have an i7-8700 3.2GHz with 32GB DDR4 3000 memory on a micro ATX motherboard. OS, BI and the BI DB is on an 256GB PCI-E drive. One EVGA GTX 1050 Ti graphics card for HA decoding. Video goes to two WD Purple 10TB drives. Snapshots, saved clips and other data goes to a WD Blue 500GB NAND SSD. Recording 24/7 direct-to-disc in BI format. I use UI3 on my office computer to view the BI feed. If need be, I use RDC to connect to the BI server from my office computer. Otherwise I go upstairs and log in to the BI computer.

Having said all of that, the BI CPU runs at about 16% with UI3 running in my office. With both UI3 and an RDC connection it runs about 22%. Memory tends to run flat at about 9GB in use (29%). The GPU runs at about 43%. Since the BI server has two NICs, the camera Ethernet runs about 2Mbps send and 96 Mbps receive. The normal LAN Ethernet runs at about 5 Mbps send and receive. The only things running on this BI PC is BI, Network Time Sync, and an antivirus.

This should give you an idea of what a system runs at.

Well originally having the BI UI running was overloading the CPU. But having said that since I made some adjustments and put limit decoding on each camera running the BI UI is only making the CPU run at 50% constant

I wanted run a monitor with the UI open with all cameras. As I want to quickly glance at it from time to time without touching a mouse or keyboard

I also have a Dahua NVR which I was trying to work out the CPU speed and RAM but it just says "Quad core embedded processor"

https://www.dahuasecurity.com/products/productDetail/8291?us&fbclid=IwAR2yFz7fSOdtu1H02cRUe6gO3g6dWbChtoqDnRRI71poI5NW1HQ1ZYjStmw

I wasnt going to use this as I use my PC with BI normally

 

[fenderman]

If you have two 4 GB sticks try removing one and running two And the proper slots

 

[bp2008]

I think @fenderman means if you have three 4 GB sticks.

Multi-Channel Memory Guide

Your computer performs best when you use all the memory channels available on your motherboard. Blue Iris software in particular can show a significant reduction in CPU usage when changing from a single-channel memory configuration to a dual-channel memory configuration. Most modern...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[fenderman]

I think @fenderman means if you have three 4 GB sticks.

Multi-Channel Memory Guide

Your computer performs best when you use all the memory channels available on your motherboard. Blue Iris software in particular can show a significant reduction in CPU usage when changing from a single-channel memory configuration to a dual-channel memory configuration. Most modern...

ipcamtalk.com

Yes.

 

[Johnman]

Will do
I should get more ram if dual channel improves

I have 3 x 4GB sticks
If I get 1 more it would boost it to 16GB in dual channel

 

[bp2008]

Or if you aren't actually using 8 GB you could take one out temporarily to see if it helps performance. Make sure the two still in the system are in alternating slots (e.g. first and third slots) so the dual channel configuration works.

 

[SouthernYankee]

I would add a hard drive to the BI PC to write NEW video. Then move it to the NAS as stored. Doing multiple overlapping writes to a NAS is not a good idea.

Make sure that all bi folders are not be checked for virus, remove them for the virus scanner.

Look at what other systems are doing with the same processor... Blue Iris Update Helper

 

[Johnman]

I would add a hard drive to the BI PC to write NEW video. Then move it to the NAS as stored. Doing multiple overlapping writes to a NAS is not a good idea.

Make sure that all bi folders are not be checked for virus, remove them for the virus scanner.

Look at what other systems are doing with the same processor... Blue Iris Update Helper

Thanks man. Is this best practice to do it this way?

Funny enough I have a spare 2TB Seagate HDD designed for CCTV ( Skyhawk ) I think its called

 

[SouthernYankee]

If using a nas, it is better to write whole complete files to it. Not records or blocks one at a time.


Advanced storage:
If you are using a complete disk for large video file storage (BVR) continuous recording, I recommend formatting the disk, with a windows cluster size of 1024K (1 Megabyte). This is a increase from the 4K default. This will reduce the physical number of disk write, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.