Standalone Java app for dedicated live view with Instant Replay

VirtualCam

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My wife would like a way to have the time and temperature up on the screen while BIV is displaying it's images. Anyone have any thoughts? I see there are some gadgets, but they take up a lot of wasted space.
 

bp2008

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You could embed these things as text overlays on your camera(s) in Blue Iris. Some people even set up a Blue Iris camera as desktop capture so they can put whatever they want on a camera monitor :)
 

J-K

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Awesome app thanks :)
If i distribute this on my network will this be putting more stress on my BI server or does it pull feed from the camera's themselves rather than through the BI server?
 

ItechashardasIcanbro

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Awesome app thanks :)
If i distribute this on my network will this be putting more stress on my BI server or does it pull feed from the camera's themselves rather than through the BI server?
It runs on the BI server, and the CPU usage is minimal.
 

brantz

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I built a Java application called BlueIrisViewer that connects to Blue Iris over the local network and pulls live, full-resolution jpeg snapshots, which are displayed in a grid. It is designed to provide higher image quality and better responsiveness than you can get from any application besides perhaps the local Blue Iris console itself. This app used to be hidden away at the bottom of my post for custom BI webserver pages, but I think it deserves its own topic.

One click on any camera image will full-screen it with no delay.

Full-screened on a high-resolution monitor, this app has much better image quality and better responsiveness than any of Blue Iris' built in web pages. As a result, it uses more CPU and network resources, and should only be used when there is no shortage of either.

The app has a configuration interface built in so you don't have to muck around with config files.



BlueIrisViewer can temporarily store images on your hard drive and play them back with the Instant Replay feature. You can look back at any moment from the last few minutes (configurable) by clicking in the Instant Replay bar along the bottom.

Instant Replay makes heavy use of the hard drive for caching, so please do not enable Instant Replay when running the app from a solid state disk (SSD). Use of the Instant Replay feature would be detrimental to the lifespan of an SSD if used for long periods of time.

You can download BlueIrisViewer here:


High-Performance Blue Iris Remote Viewer - Home


Usage


  • Extract and run BlueIrisViewer.jar on the computer you want to view cameras with. If your system can't open this, ensure you have Java installed correctly.
  • Press the 'o' key on your keyboard to open the options menu. If anything goes horribly wrong, which it shouldn't, you can delete BIVSettings.cfg from the directory where your BlueIrisViewer.jar is located and everything will be back to defaults.
I just ran some updates on Windows 10 today (Feb 9, 2017) and now BlueIrisViewer.jar will not run, however I tested some other .jar files and they run just fine. I tried installing the latest Java version and also tried uninstalling and reinstalling it with no luck. Anyone else having this difficulty?

Thanks.
 
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ItechashardasIcanbro

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I just ran some updates on Windows 10 today (Feb 9, 2017) and now BlueIrisViewer.jar will not run, however I tested some other .jar files and they run just fine. I tried installing the latest Java version and also tried uninstalling and reinstalling it with no luck. Anyone else having this difficulty?

Thanks.
Manual Updating is a smart route, but it may be a good idea to create a restore point before any updates to the NVR.
 

kkdz28

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I just ran some updates on Windows 10 today (Feb 9, 2017) and now BlueIrisViewer.jar will not run, however I tested some other .jar files and they run just fine. I tried installing the latest Java version and also tried uninstalling and reinstalling it with no luck. Anyone else having this difficulty?

Thanks.
I updated to Win 10 1607 and I can not open the Viewer anymore. It will flash for a sec and close right away. I tried to remove and reinstall Java and get a new copy of Blue Iris Viewer but no help. Runs fine on an old Win 8.1 box. Just for fun I updated that box knowing it was working to Win 10 latest update and no go. Restore back and works. Anyone help on this? Is it a java Setting or Code change issue?
Thanks
 

LTek

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I updated to Win 10 1607 and I can not open the Viewer anymore. It will flash for a sec and close right away. I tried to remove and reinstall Java and get a new copy of Blue Iris Viewer but no help. Runs fine on an old Win 8.1 box. Just for fun I updated that box knowing it was working to Win 10 latest update and no go. Restore back and works. Anyone help on this? Is it a java Setting or Code change issue?
Thanks
I use this almost every day on win 10, all updates installed.

Try uninstalling Java completely, then install the latest Java suite

Sent from my SM-G935U using Tapatalk
 

brantz

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I made some progress on my side... I usually use my laptop with the lid closed and an external video monitor plugged into a USB-attached external port expander that provides video through a DisplayLink driver. This always used to work for the BlueIrisViewer, but it stopped and wouldn't open after recent updates. It turns out that if I open the lid on the laptop and switch to the built in video card with the Intel driver, BlueIrisViewer runs just fine. I captured an error while starting BlueIrisViewer on the external video card that said "OpenGL is not supported by the video driver.". I updated that driver but still no luck... Any help is much appreciated. Thx.
 

LTek

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I made some progress on my side... I usually use my laptop with the lid closed and an external video monitor plugged into a USB-attached external port expander that provides video through a DisplayLink driver. This always used to work for the BlueIrisViewer, but it stopped and wouldn't open after recent updates. It turns out that if I open the lid on the laptop and switch to the built in video card with the Intel driver, BlueIrisViewer runs just fine. I captured an error while starting BlueIrisViewer on the external video card that said "OpenGL is not supported by the video driver.". I updated that driver but still no luck... Any help is much appreciated. Thx.
It's not going to work with remote desktop. You'd need a remote app (like citrix) that supports opengl

Sent from my SM-G935U using Tapatalk
 

brantz

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It's not going to work with remote desktop. You'd need a remote app (like citrix) that supports opengl

Sent from my SM-G935U using Tapatalk
This is not a remote desktop configuration, this is simply an external video port on a laptop port expander and it has worked perfectly with BlueIrisViewer for almost a year without a problem. It seems that a system update has messed it up, but as I said, the BlueIrisViewer still works on the native video card on the laptop - it is just very inconvenient to use it that way given my set-up.
 

kkdz28

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After a little more digging and playing around I have more info. I am trying to get the Blue Iris Viewer to run on some Older Tablets. They only have 32bit CPUs (Atoms) so not sure if that is the problem. I have other Win 10 boxes (64Bit) that look to run the Viewer fine. These tablets were Win 8.1 system and could use Blue Iris Viewer with Java 8 Update 121 fine. Update from Win8.1 32 bit to Win 10 32 bit version and no go. I removed Java completely again and rebooted. Fresh download and reinstall of Java 8 update 121. Quick flash when you try to open Viewer. I see an error log in the folder. Says a Fatal Error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment. Exception_Access_Violation (0xc0000005) At pc-0x00000000, pid=6252, tid=0x000018e0.
 

kkdz28

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I might just be screwed. Looking more into it and the Atom CPU Z2760 Display adapters do not have a full Windows 10 driver. Pretty sure that is the problem here for me. Guess blow away Win 10 and load 8.1 back. Still supported until 2023.
 

U2mad

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It's been working great for me. The only thing I've run across that might be nice is enabling camera labels and being able to re-arrange the camera order. For the time being, I've just added a text overlay to the cameras that I wanted the label on.
 

gth

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Not sure where the java app is getting the list of camera names from? All I am seeing in the Camera Layout list are two cameras in a group called "back".

Running BI v4.5.2.3 x64 on Win7 with Java app v2.7. Cleared the folder of all but the .jar file to reset it, but problem persisted.

Update: I had to create a group called "all" and add all the cameras to it, and then the java app listed all of my cameras. Strange.
 

bp2008

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Sorry for going so long without replying here. I miss one email notification of a post, and the forum won't send any more until I visit the thread.

Those of you who can't get the program to run, the two most common reasons are:

1) The program may not have write permissions in the folder it is running in. Try placing it on the desktop or in the Documents folder.
2) The video adapter may not support a new enough openGL version for the game engine this program is based on.

If it is crashing on startup and there is no error log file, try opening the program from a command prompt:

Method 1) Click the File menu, and choose "Open command prompt"
Method 2) Open the folder where BlueIrisViewer.jar is, make sure no files are selected, then hold Shift and right click an empty space in the folder. Chose "Open command window here".

In the command prompt, type

Code:
java -jar BlueIrisViewer.jar
An error message should appear in the command prompt as the crash occurs.

Awesome app thanks :)
If i distribute this on my network will this be putting more stress on my BI server or does it pull feed from the camera's themselves rather than through the BI server?
This program puts a large load on your BI server, whether you run the program on that BI server or not, because it is requiring Blue Iris to rapidly encode Jpeg snapshots of every camera you have enabled in the viewer, all at the same time. It also puts a significant load on the viewing machine to decode those snapshots. This means it is actually worse to run it on the BI server because then you have Blue Iris's additional CPU usage plus the usage of the viewer, both fighting for CPU time.

It would be nice to pull video from the cameras directly and thereby not affect or require Blue Iris at all, but that would be like a month of full time work most likely, and I am simply not going to do it.

Not sure where the java app is getting the list of camera names from? All I am seeing in the Camera Layout list are two cameras in a group called "back".

Running BI v4.5.2.3 x64 on Win7 with Java app v2.7. Cleared the folder of all but the .jar file to reset it, but problem persisted.

Update: I had to create a group called "all" and add all the cameras to it, and then the java app listed all of my cameras. Strange.
The camera names come from Blue Iris when the program starts. So if the account you log in with does not have access to all the cameras, you won't see them all. If you think the account should have access to all the cameras, then your default "All cameras" group (everyone has it) probably has webcasting disabled. You can enable it here:

 
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VirtualCam

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I too am also suddenly having a problem with BIV starting on Windows 10. I turned on the machine, started BIV and it worked fine. I got a notice of a Java update, so I stopped BIV, updated Java, and now BIV just comes back to the command prompt when I run the jar file.

I didn't have time to play, so I'll look at it more tonight.

The other problem I'm having with BIV is that when I reboot the BI server, I also have to restart all of the BIV viewers. Otherwise they are just stopped in time, showing the last image they had before the BI server was rebooted. Is this normal? Or why is BIV not reconnecting when it looses connection to the server?
 

bp2008

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BIV should reconnect; it always has for me and I've never been able to figure out why it doesn't for other people.

If it is crashing on startup, check for an error log file (same folder the jar is in). Otherwise, try opening the program from a command prompt:

Method 1) Click the File menu, and choose "Open command prompt"
Method 2) Open the folder where BlueIrisViewer.jar is, make sure no files are selected, then hold Shift and right click an empty space in the folder. Chose "Open command window here".

In the command prompt, type

Code:
java -jar BlueIrisViewer.jar
An error message should appear in the command prompt as the crash occurs.
 

VirtualCam

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No error log is being generated but it is giving a Java exception. OpenGL is not supported by this video driver.

I'm not sure what's changed in Java. I updated to 8.131 and started getting the error. I uninstalled and installed 8.51 and now the error is gone and I can run BIV again!

I googled the error and Stack Overflow has some suggestions to add to Java code to see if the driver supports newer versions of OpenGL and if it doesn't, you need to init the OpenGL driver with a different setting.

OpenGL is not supported by the video driver

I'm not sure why my laptop should be getting this error anyways, it's a Core I3 with HD graphics so it should fully support OpenGL. Maybe it's a Java bug.
 
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