Understanding the differences between folders / post / record / snapshots / databases

[alanc]

Hello,

I am having some (mental) difficulties in understanding the different menu options in BlueIris for my cameras. Currently I have 5 cameras (2 indoor, 3 outdoor) and plan on adding more in the future. After reading the help file quite a bit, I believe I am further confusing myself. It may be that I'm way overcomplicating things, or that BlueIris is just a very complex, powerful program! I've been using BlueIris since before v3, but have never used it to its full potential.

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me understand the following menu options

1) Right now I somehow am able to get BlueIris to upload a 1-minute snapshot to a FTP site and also store the snapshot into my 'New' folder. I see two options in the camera properties that talk about snapshots. Under 'Record' there is the 'Create JPEG snapshot each XX:YY mm:ss', and under 'Post' there is a 'Queue an image update each XX sec' - I have both of these set to 1 minute, but am not certain which does which.

If I just have the 'Post' option enabled, will my once-a-minute image be uploaded to the remote FTP and not stored in my 'New' folder? It's confusing because under 'Post Target' I have FTP server and folder selected as a target, and while BlueIris uploads the file perfectly every minute, it never puts anything in the target folder (C:\BlueIris\www).

2) Since I am storing a once-a-minute snapshot of all my cameras, the New/Archive folders get HUGE, and can have hundreds of thousands of files in there! I'm also interested in adding motion capture/triggering to my configuration. Is it possible to have the timeline and Clips view show only video triggers and not the image snapshots? It's very difficult to scroll through thousands of files a day in the clip viewer and distinguish which may be a motion clip versus a snapshot image. This would be super helpful when viewing BlueIris via it's Webserver or through the iPhone app.

3) In the timeline view, it shows a little tickmark for each 1-minute snapshot it takes. However when I click on the timeline the image doesn't show up in the viewer. Should I be able to click and drag the vertical timeline bar and have the viewer show the active video/snapshot for that particular time, or so I have to use the media control/navigation buttons (pause, play, and the curved arrow buttons)? Neither tends to want to display any snapshot information.

4) Under 'Clips and archiving' there are database and folder subsections. Is the database a supplement to the files that are stored under the new/storage folders? Do the stills and videos shown in the timeline/clip viewer come from the database or the new/storage folders? The help file says the database is designed to be much faster, but doesn't say if it's a full replacement for the files. Is it preferred to let the database do all the heavy lifting, and then figure out how to export the stills/videos of interest from the database to individual files?

If I am storing duplicate data in the database and then in the folders, especially with 5 cameras taking a 1-minute snapshot, then there is a lot of data.

5) Under Email Alerts for a motion trigger, the 'Attach X image/s, one image every Y sec' option is strangely worded. Does 'X image/s' mean X images per second, or is the slash just to say it may be singular or plural? I'm used to differentiating this like 'X image(s)'

Thank you so very much for any guidance you may be able to offer my poor, confused brain. I'm not sure why I have such a mental block on being able to easily understand this.

 

[fenderman]

Re: Understanding the differences between folders / post / record / snapshots / datab

@alanc Welcome to the forum!
1) What are you trying to accomplish with the snapshots - what is their purpose?
2) If you select alerts instead of all clips you should not see the snapshots.
3) clicking on the timeline will not display the snapshot-that might be a bug...
4)the db is a separate file that you cannot access, its just a method blue iris uses to sort through thousands of files. It does not store video files
4) X images per Y seconds...so you can set it to email 5 images every 10 seconds...or 3 images every second...etc
Side note: if you assign a distinct color to each camera, camera properties>general>event color you will be able to differentiate the cameras on the time line by color instead of seeing one blue line..(this will only affect new recordings, its not retroactive)

 

[alanc]

Re: Understanding the differences between folders / post / record / snapshots / datab

@alanc Welcome to the forum!

Thanks. Been a long time lurker, but just registered to ask my questions before I pulled out all of my hair

1) What are you trying to accomplish with the snapshots - what is their purpose?

My system is on a low-bandwidth connection in the middle of nowhere on top of a mountain. Until recently we didn't have hardly any bandwidth to send a short, low-resolution video clip without it taking several minutes or even timing out.

So my thought for doing the snapshots was to mainly keep a general eye on what was going on up there without doing any video. Take a picture of what cars may have driven up the driveway, or figure out generally how long the caretaker was at the house. I also thought it would be neat to keep the snapshots in order to make timelapse videos. My inspiration came from Dr. Dale Ireland, whose camera system (in a gorgeous backdrop) created a new timelapse video every hour of the past 8 hours. I haven't gotten that far yet. I do take the one minute snapshot, overlay the time and temperature from a weather station I installed, and upload it via FTP to a web server. Makes it quick and easy to check on things without sucking up a lot of bandwidth.

2) If you select alerts instead of all clips you should not see the snapshots.

Perfect. The clips database and list are new to me, and I haven't fully explored all of the buttons on there.

3) clicking on the timeline will not display the snapshot-that might be a bug...

I will submit a support ticket about this.

4) X images per Y seconds...so you can set it to email 5 images every 10 seconds...or 3 images every second...etc

Thank you for clarifying this

Side note: if you assign a distinct color to each camera, camera properties>general>event color you will be able to differentiate the cameras on the time line by color instead of seeing one blue line..(this will only affect new recordings, its not retroactive)

This is wonderful. I have stared at BlueIris menus for several years now, but have never noticed these colors. It will be helpful as I transition away from snapshots into using motion capture.

I'm enjoying the BlueIris app and Web interface, along with the BlueIris Viewer that I saw mentioned on these forums. My configuration was tricky. For some reason I'm not able to get my ISP-provided modem to allow incoming connections, despite enabling port forwarding. So I set up a tunnel server system using an awesome program called 'ngrok' (ngrok - secure introspectable tunnels to localhost) and proxy everything through an Amazon EC2 instance. Sounds like a highly convoluted way of doing this, but it works well on all platforms.

Thank you for answering my questions. Looking forward to playing with some of these settings later this week. Thank goodness for Remote Desktop!

 

[fenderman]

Re: Understanding the differences between folders / post / record / snapshots / datab

For your purpose you dont need to set anything in the "post" tab...just set "create jpeg post each" in the record tab....if you dont need the timelapse and only want snapshots on motion, select "only when triggered"..interesting use of ngrok and amazon...