Triggered recordings are only using sub stream lower quality

bp2008 said:
Hi @RifRaff13. UI3 developer here. Blue Iris support informed me of this problem on July 31st (at least in the context of "Snapshot" clips, like @sdkid was showing for his "Front Garage" snapshot). Can you right click any of the affected clips in UI3 and click "Properties" and see what resolution is listed? I'm assuming you will see your sub stream's resolution (856x480 or similar) there. That will confirm if this is the same issue.

Assuming it is indeed showing your sub stream's resolution, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is, that means UI3 is operating as designed, and it is Blue Iris's bug to fix. You should contact Blue Iris support to let them know you're having this issue with your clips having the sub stream's resolution listed in their metadata. The good news is, I think you may be able to work around the problem in the meantime by using UI3-196 which has older video scaling code which does not treat the reported resolution as a hard limit (that change only became necessary to support Timeline playback in UI3-197 and newer). So if you download UI3-196 and install it in a subdirectory of Blue Iris's web server, e.g. C:\Program Files\Blue Iris 5\www\ui3-196, then you can access it by inserting that folder name into your address bar, e.g. http://127.0.0.1:81/ui3-196/ui3.htm.

Running UI3-196 you are likely to encounter other bugs like having the wrong camera open when you click on it in the group view due to changes in how all that stuff works. But it should be able to play your clips at higher resolution at least.



Quality 100% is a bad idea, especially if you uncheck rate control, because it will produce highly inflated bit rates that the video decoder might not even be able to handle, that is assuming your network is strong enough to get the video stream through in realtime. The bit rate input's max value is 8192, not 512.

Direct-to-wire streaming currently only affects live streaming of single cameras, so it doesn't affect recording at all. It is also something I do not recommend in general because you won't get any of Blue Iris's overlays that way and UI3 will be unable to control resolution or bandwidth usage.
Click to expand...

Confirmed as well.

1660335852908.png

I will checkout the other UI and let you know for sure.

Thanks!
 
sdkid said:
Yes-- if you look at the screen shot I posted, it shows the resolution at 848x480.
When I went into the folder of that image, it was full resolution 2688 by 1520....

I thought that was really odd-- is BI saving 2 different jpgs?
If it is--- where is the low-res version stored?
If not, is UI3 auto-generating it from the full res jpg?

View attachment 136332
Click to expand...

Every clip or snapshot gets a low-res thumbnail stored within one of the .dat files of the clip database. That is the thumbnail image you see in UI3's clip list and when you open the Clip Properties panel (as seen above). But that is not related to the current issue at all.

This gets complicated really fast, but I'll try to explain exactly what is happening. In your case @sdkid, Blue Iris is saving a snapshot from the main stream, and it gets that part done correctly which is why you find the full resolution in the file on disk. But at the same time, Blue Iris creates a database entry for that snapshot, and the wrong resolution numbers get written into the clip database. The database is supposed to say width: 2688, height: 1520 which is the actual resolution of the file on disk. But instead Blue Iris got confused and stored the sub stream's resolution there, width: 848, height: 480. That incorrect size gets communicated to UI3, and UI3-197 and newer is coded to never ask for any size larger than Blue Iris says is available because doing so causes undesirable effects on the Timeline.

@RifRaff13 is having the same problem, but with video clips, not just snapshots.
 
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bp2008 said:
Every clip or snapshot gets a low-res thumbnail stored within one of the .dat files of the clip database. That is the thumbnail image you see in UI3's clip list and when you open the Clip Properties panel (as seen above). But that is not related to the current issue at all.

This gets complicated really fast, but I'll try to explain exactly what is happening. In your case @sdkid, Blue Iris is saving a snapshot from the main stream, and it gets that part done correctly which is why you find the full resolution in the file on disk. But at the same time, Blue Iris creates a database entry for that snapshot, and the wrong resolution numbers get written into the clip database. The database is supposed to say width: 2688, height: 1520 which is the actual resolution of the file on disk. But instead Blue Iris got confused and stored the sub stream's resolution there, width: 848, height: 480. That incorrect size gets communicated to UI3, and UI3-197 and newer is coded to never ask for any size larger than Blue Iris says is available because doing so causes undesirable effects on the Timeline.

@RifRaff13 is having the same problem, but with video clips, not just snapshots.
Click to expand...
that makes a lot of sense--- so why are my video clips at the correct resolution, while his are not? The fact that I am seeing this only in the jpgs and not in the videos is what didn't makes sense to me.

EDIT: Look at the properties page for this jpg....
1660343776667.png

I am able to DOWNLOAD via the link, and see the full res jpg.... so this is really only limited to viewing within UI3. Hopefully it is a fairly simple code fix to correct.

1660343899104.png
 
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bp2008 said:
Hi @RifRaff13. UI3 developer here. Blue Iris support informed me of this problem on July 31st (at least in the context of "Snapshot" clips, like @sdkid was showing for his "Front Garage" snapshot). Can you right click any of the affected clips in UI3 and click "Properties" and see what resolution is listed? I'm assuming you will see your sub stream's resolution (856x480 or similar) there. That will confirm if this is the same issue.

Assuming it is indeed showing your sub stream's resolution, there is good news and bad news. The bad news is, that means UI3 is operating as designed, and it is Blue Iris's bug to fix. You should contact Blue Iris support to let them know you're having this issue with your clips having the sub stream's resolution listed in their metadata. The good news is, I think you may be able to work around the problem in the meantime by using UI3-196 which has older video scaling code which does not treat the reported resolution as a hard limit (that change only became necessary to support Timeline playback in UI3-197 and newer). So if you download UI3-196 and install it in a subdirectory of Blue Iris's web server, e.g. C:\Program Files\Blue Iris 5\www\ui3-196, then you can access it by inserting that folder name into your address bar, e.g. http://127.0.0.1:81/ui3-196/ui3.htm.

Running UI3-196 you are likely to encounter other bugs like having the wrong camera open when you click on it in the group view due to changes in how all that stuff works. But it should be able to play your clips at higher resolution at least.



Quality 100% is a bad idea, especially if you uncheck rate control, because it will produce highly inflated bit rates that the video decoder might not even be able to handle, that is assuming your network is strong enough to get the video stream through in realtime. The bit rate input's max value is 8192, not 512.

Direct-to-wire streaming currently only affects live streaming of single cameras, so it doesn't affect recording at all. It is also something I do not recommend in general because you won't get any of Blue Iris's overlays that way and UI3 will be unable to control resolution or bandwidth usage.
Click to expand...

Hey bp2008,

So i loaded the ui-193. It looks better, although the right click properties does not provide resolution details:

1660400745238.png

So this appears to be a known bug in the new UI code? You can pass it along that you have more confirmation, or do iwe all need to send emails to support with this information?

Thanks
Rif
 
RifRaff13 said:
So this appears to be a known bug in the new UI code?
Click to expand...

The bug isn't in the UI code, it is in the backend of Blue Iris when it puts the wrong resolution into the clip database. It just happens that older UI3 code uses different video scaling approaches that are less affected when the resolution string given by Blue Iris is wrong.

RifRaff13 said:
You can pass it along that you have more confirmation, or do iwe all need to send emails to support with this information?
Click to expand...

Best to email BI support if your new clips or snapshots are still being created this way in the latest BI release. It is important to realize that when BI fixes this bug, it will not retroactively repair any clips/snapshots that were recorded with a buggy BI version, because the wrong resolution will still be written in the clip database. You could possibly fix it at that point by regenerating the clip database.
 
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Just as a follow up. I got a response from support, and so i described the issue and gave him all the data about it looking in a UI3 issues etc. No reply from my response. Will let everyone know.

Rif
 
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So I have not heard back from BI support. Replays even on the server are still sub quality it appears. This is becoming an issue...

Anyone have advice on how to export the full stream into another viewer maybe?

Or whats another cam system people use with proper resolution playback?

Captured this last night and the resolution is weak. I have 4k cams and the software wont use it... very frustrated!

1660826065241.png
 
They are limits. With a screen recorder for Mac, continuous recording in BI, setting it for 1hr, will get hour-long clips. The intelligent BI will do this on the hour. So you'll have a video file for 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, etc. You will get three-hour-long files if you set the timer for three hours. The majority of individuals who record continuously utilize an hour. You should specify the maximum file size to be bigger than your typical file size. My typical 4K files last an hour and weigh around 2.8GB. Since I was using H264 and the files were bigger, all of mine are at 7.
 
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The discovered problem is that all playbacks in UI3 (current 5.6.0.8) only will play back the sub stream, never the 4k main stream. Since it records both, its in there but the index only allows playback of the sub stream. I had opened a ticket and they said they would pass it to the developers, and i have never heard anything back since. We know this as i had loaded and used an earlier UI and it did play back a 4k stream, but the indexing was all messed up so i couldn't continue to use it.

The hope is that they are working to resolve the issue.

Rif
 
I don't know if they've fixed having BI record the wrong resolution metadata to the clip database yet. But whenever that does get fixed it will only affect clips recorded after that point. Not those done before.
 
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