Steve at Michigan Broadband Systems Inc. Ann Arbor MI, USA

MichiganBroadband.com

MichiganBroadband.com

Young grasshopper
Dec 8, 2016
57
5
Hi Just a quick intro. *not*
Brand new to Blue Iris trying it out for a client.

I work mostly in Michigan (USA) designing installing and maintaining information and communications systems for small to medium businesses around here and I typically travel for projects on average 3-4 times per year for those clients who are moving or expanding their networks & systems beyond or out of the local area here.

Been in this business since 1995 and absolutely love it and also find myself doing a lot of it just for fun
in my free time away from work as well.

I have been very successfully working with Reolink IP cameras for the past 2 years and have become a huge fan and implementer of them.

I've known about Blue Iris for several years but this is my first request to install it for a client.

Been testing it myself and found it extremely easy to setup & use.
It has many advanced capabilities as well that I will get more familiar with over time.

One thing that really caught me off guard was how much CPU utilization it is taking to continuously record only 3 Reolink cameras.

This was my out of the box experience is that on a high end Skylake system i5 or i7 I am immediately maxing out CPU with only 3 cameras which are sending out HD: 2560*1440 @30FPS.

With a high end Computer I was expecting to handle continuously recording 7 or 8 streams.
And so was the client.

I realize these are some heavy demands and non conventional "security camera" type settings and resolutions but still I was hoping to handle 8 streams at full resolution and frame rate.

I was also expecting Nvidia GPU offloading for video decoding as it is recorded and have noticed that
Installed GPU and latest drivers make absolutely no difference in the performance in my tests.

Other than backing off frame rates and limiting resolution to lower levels, I was hoping to get some answers and good pointers here on the forum.

I have been contacting Blue Iris Support and have not obtained any solid answers from them yet.
I have also been sending them multiple questions and they only reply to my first question in the email.
It seems as though they want me to limit my support emails to one question and you have to wait 24-48 hours for each response.

Their last response suggested to come here to the forum and ask any hardware related questions here o to figure out what works the best for what I am trying to do.

Sorry for the long "tech introduction".

And I'm pretty sure I'll need to move my questions to another section of the forum but I wanted to
let people know why I joined initially and what I'm sorta looking for.
I plan to stick around for a long time and also be helpful here as I learn more.
And get a good handle on what hardware can handle this really well.

Thanks!
Steve
 
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MichiganBroadband.com said:
It seems as though they want me to limit my support emails to one question and you have to wait 24-48 hours for each response.
Click to expand...

BI is basically a one man operation from my understanding (programming, tech support, one man show). You may want to post the hardware/tech question part of this in the Blue Iris Sub. @fenderman will most likely be able to tell you exactly what is wrong fairly quickly.
 
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I saw this on one of the BI threads that might help you possibly, possibly not. The below answer was in regards to 85-100% utilization over a few cameras.
"Make sure you are using direct to disk on each camera, set fps to 15 and select 10fps for the live preview rate."
 
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Thanks!
On my own I had already reduced to FR to 15 which made a huge difference.
But I'm here to learn and see if there is anything I'm missing to actually be able to do the full 30FPS with more cameras with the high end hardware I am using.
Just before you posted I did indeed notice the option to record direct to disk (without converting).. not tried that yet.
Not sure how much but that will definitely save on some CPU cycles probably at the cost of disk space but that's expected.

Even at high resolutions and 30FPS I was truly expecting it to handle more than 2 or 3 cameras.
Especially since they are claiming using a good video card should help.. or I at least got that impression that it would as they recommended NVidia.

And they are talking about supporting 32-64 cameras.
Um...
What-- at 1 frame per second? ;)
 
MichiganBroadband.com said:
Thanks!!
Pretty impressive for a one man operation.
*Talking about the Blue Iris guy* :)
Click to expand...
As zero-degrees pointed out you must set each camera for direct to disk recording. This does not function in demo mode despite being able to select it.
Also note that reolink and blue iris do not play well together. This is because reolink refuses to add an iframe interval setting in their firmware. Reolink quite frankly is garbage and not high end at all...in fact its low end. There are several threads that discuss this topic. There are MUCH better options than reolink. Look at dahua.
Do NOT use the nvidia card. it only helps for displaying the cameras and only matters if you display lots of cams...what you want is to use the intel HD graphics and enable hardware acceleration.
as an example I can run about 12 cameras using a total 30mp on an i7-4770 at about 22 percent cpu...you need to properly configure blue iris.
 
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fenderman said:
This does not function in demo mode despite being able to select it.
Click to expand...

Interesting to know odd that support would not point that out to me when I was very specifically asking them what I was experiencing and that I was using the demo with
plans to purchase.

All great information and insight Thank You!

I've really enjoyed the Reolink Cameras standalone outside of using them with a DVR or anything else.
Maybe just a get what you pay for deal they are very inexpensive and have done well at simple realtime only monitoring situations..
I never expected to last a summer and winter outside for the price.
That is where I am most impressed and the video is extremely clear compared to old NTSC stuff I have experienced.

But Yes I'm very green here and have some things to learn and time to spend getting familiar with BI.

Thanks for sharing your experience with me.

I'll look into the recommendations you presented :)

What problem in Blue Iris does the iframe interval non settable cause or limit?

Silly me don;t even know what an iframe is... guessing some kind of sync info on a frame to keep in sync with RTP packet sending etc. kind of thing..
To eliminate flicker or pauses in video.
 
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Thank you so much for you help here!!

One (of many) things I don't understand on the reolink cameras is you can set the max bits per second speed along with the resolution and frame rate..
Not sure if that means one should set "8Mbps" which is the upper end to get LESS compression and send more data or what.
Because the setting there is the same no matter what resolution and frame rate you select.
Sorta like it would never reach that kind of network speed yet you can set it.
Or when you are using max resolution and max frame rate you can still set the BPS to part of the lower range.
Which would either severely compress things (assuming) or drop frames to match the bandwidth setting.

And as usual they don;t bother to explain any of it anywhere.

Seems that Blue Iris is feature loaded and might be a little weak on the documentation that comes with it as well.

Like a nice motherboard with all kinds of advanced settings available but the manual doesn't cover any or most of them.

I would bug people a lot less if there were really good documentation on some things.

But then again I really need to get out and interact with real people more often :)
 
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The help file covers all the details of all the settings...its very detailed. There is no disk space cost to writing direct to disk...the bitrate is set in the camera itself.
 
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Just tried setting direct to disk (on 3 cameras) *no other changes to anything* CPU usage went way down to 11% but local displays are only updating once every 5 seconds now.
 
It's a bit freaked out with the direct to disk set.
The recording when played back looks frozen complete.
Trying a restart on it since that setting.
 
Thanks Will do.
Any real testing or use is without remote desktop.
I'm just using it at the moment for convenience.
And of course didn't even think about that at first when behavoir changed.
 
This is insanely good help for a guy on a user forum.
Its just crazy how much I thought I had a handle on this stuff when I really don't.
There's new stuff to learn and experience EVERYWHERE.
Even where you least expect it.
Thank you.
 
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