Understanding Ui3 burden on Bi PC

[twoskinsoneman]

My setup I'm currently putting together is 8-10 4MP cams and 3-4 4K cams.
I'm deciding on hardware and have looked at all the recommendations for PCUs etc.
My biggest concern is my desire to have 5 or 6 LED monitors around various onsite locations that will constantly show 4 high quality camera views.
My plan is to have a Raspberry pi running Ui3 for each monitor. I want the monitors to have high res camera views all the time so my understanding is they will require mainstreams instead of substreams.
I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of burden these monitors viewing mainstreams will put on the Bi PC.
What kind of PCU power am I going to need to achieve what I'm after?
Any input is appreciated.

 

[fenderman]

My setup I'm currently putting together is 8-10 4MP cams and 3-4 4K cams.
I'm deciding on hardware and have looked at all the recommendations for PCUs etc.
My biggest concern is my desire to have 5 or 6 LED monitors around various onsite locations that will constantly show 4 high quality camera views.
My plan is to have a Raspberry pi running Ui3 for each monitor. I want the monitors to have high res camera views all the time so my understanding is they will require mainstreams instead of substreams.
I'm having trouble figuring out what kind of burden these monitors viewing mainstreams will put on the Bi PC.
What kind of PCU power am I going to need to achieve what I'm after?
Any input is appreciated.

You dont need the main stream...most modern cameras have a third stream that is 1-2mp....in a matrix view on a monitor with 12+ cams you wont be able to discern the difference.

 

[JNDATHP]

Also, if you touch the screen area for the camera in UI3 it will then display the main stream.

 

[twoskinsoneman]

Thank for the replies.
Let me ask it in another way. It seems like fundamental knowledge but I just want to clarify it.
The recommendation for CPU power was something like add up the total cameras MPs and it relates to the benchmark score you should have in the CPU.
As far as CPU burden, is adding a remote viewing monitor with raspberry pi running Ui3 with 4 camera views similar to having an additional 4 cameras?

 

[bradner]

Thank for the replies.
Let me ask it in another way. It seems like fundamental knowledge but I just want to clarify it.
The recommendation for CPU power was something like add up the total cameras MPs and it relates to the benchmark score you should have in the CPU.
As far as CPU burden, is adding a remote viewing monitor with raspberry pi running Ui3 with 4 camera views similar to having an additional 4 cameras?

No way. I have 32+ cams on an i5 4th gen CPU and run UI3 on 4-5 TV's with 25+ cams displayed total and my CPU on my BI machine is always under 50% and that's with CP running on 5 cams.

 

[wittaj]

Believe us, substream view is more than enough for multi-camera view.

Refusal to use substreams and use only mainstream exponentially increases the CPU demands and will strangle your system at some point.

 

[twoskinsoneman]

No way. I have 32+ cams on an i5 4th gen CPU and run UI3 on 4-5 TV's with 25+ cams displayed total and my CPU on my BI machine is always under 50% and that's with CP running on 5 cams.

Thank you. I don't really understand the way it works too well but it seems like the burden on the CPU from the the various Ui3s isn't that intensive.

 

[twoskinsoneman]

Believe us, substream view is more than enough for multi-camera view.

Refusal to use substreams and use only mainstream exponentially increases the CPU demands and will strangle your system at some point.

I get it. I may end up giving in if it doesn't work out, but I'm going to stubbornly buck the common wisdom and try. I installed Bi on a cheap (ebay) Dell Precisio i7-8700 and hooked up a 5MP turret cam. After viewing the substream and then clicking on it to view the mainstream I really want the mainstream clarity for the remote monitors.
I'm hoping if I put out for a good CPU I can make it happen.

 

[fenderman]

I get it. I may end up giving in if it doesn't work out, but I'm going to stubbornly buck the common wisdom and try. I installed Bi on a cheap (ebay) Dell Precisio i7-8700 and hooked up a 5MP turret cam. After viewing the substream and then clicking on it to view the mainstream I really want the mainstream clarity for the remote monitors.
I'm hoping if I put out for a good CPU I can make it happen.

again if you use 2mp third stream you wont see a difference...its not full screen... when in a matrix with 20 cams

 

[wittaj]

If you only have one camera, it is probably only showing mainstream as a solo...

Blasting mainstream to multiple devices will also bring down your network in addition to strangling your computer...

And one camera versus 4 or more on a screen and you won't notice it's substream...

You can always bump the bitrate of the substream.

Give it a day and you won't notice a difference.

This D1 resolution isn't good enough for you in multi-camera view?

If substreams degraded the performance none of us would use it.

Plus when you solo a camera, it goes to mainstream.

While this thread is for LPR, tell me that the D1 resolution at a higher bitrate is not good enough for your eyes in a multi-camera view. Or as pointed out, use a higher substream resolution.

How much resolution is really needed for LPR

We have folks come here all the time thinking that more MP is better, whether it be for general purposes or for LPR. Those of us that have been around long enough know that sensor size is more important than MP. Those that have been here awhile know that I share a representative sample of...

ipcamtalk.com

 

[twoskinsoneman]

again if you use 2mp third stream you wont see a difference...its not full screen... when in a matrix with 20 cams

Thank you. I won't forget and will look to see if the cams I've installed have that function. TBH I didn't know most cameras had a third stream.

 

[wittaj]

Let me guess, you plan to run 30FPS also?

 

[twoskinsoneman]

If you only have one camera, it is probably only showing mainstream as a solo...

Blasting mainstream to multiple devices will also bring down your network in addition to strangling your computer...

And one camera versus 4 or more on a screen and you won't notice it's substream...

You can always bump the bitrate of the substream.

Give it a day and you won't notice a difference.

This D1 resolution isn't good enough for you in multi-camera view?

If substreams degraded the performance none of us would use it.

Plus when you solo a camera, it goes to mainstream.

While this thread is for LPR, tell me that the D1 resolution at a higher bitrate is not good enough for your eyes in a multi-camera view. Or as pointed out, use a higher substream resolution.

How much resolution is really needed for LPR

We have folks come here all the time thinking that more MP is better, whether it be for general purposes or for LPR. Those of us that have been around long enough know that sensor size is more important than MP. Those that have been here awhile know that I share a representative sample of...

ipcamtalk.com

I didn't think you would use a degraded performing system. I just thought mostly it was used to record and playback when needed. I don't see folks talking about constantly monitoring that often. I will check out the thread and keep an open mind. Also I didn't think about the network traffic being too much, only forking out enough cash for a CPU that could handle it. Thanks for that reminder.

 

[fenderman]

Thank you. I won't forget and will look to see if the cams I've installed have that function. TBH I didn't know most cameras had a third stream.

Most modern dahua and hik cameras do....the hiks are generally limited to 720p (1mp) but i have seen some with 2 iirc....Also on some hiks its just an option in the substream rather than a third stream.

Even with the standard substreams if you have a bunch of cameras up on a monitor you wont see a difference since the image is so small.

 

[twoskinsoneman]

Let me guess, you plan to run 30FPS also?

You mean everyone doesn't run 60FPS?

 

[wittaj]

Keep in mind NVRs have used substreams for years. They wouldn't be able to operate without them.

We see folks come here adding a new camera to an NVR and in multiview it won't show. In troubleshooting we find out they disabled substream on the camera and the NVR will only show substream in multicamera view.

So you said you plan on 10 4MP cameras and 4 4K cameras.

That is 72 MP.

If you want to run 60FPS, then you are running 4,320 MP/s.

Per the wiki once you get above 1,500 FPS, all bets are off.

Based on 72MP, if you run over 20FPS even the top of the line latest computer you could buy (relatively speaking) will struggle...

I don't know if you are joking about 60FPS LOL, but anything more than 15FPS is a waste for surveillance cameras.

We are not making Hollywood movies.

For surveillance cameras, shutter speed is more important than FPS.

Sure 60FPS can provide a smoother video but no police officer has said "wow that person really is running smooth". They want the ability to freeze frame and get a clean image. So be it if the video is a little choppy....and at 10-15FPS it won't be appreciable. My neighbor runs his at 60FPS, so the person or car goes by looking smooth, but it is a blur when trying to freeze frame it because the camera can't keep up. Meanwhile my camera at 15FPS with the proper shutter speed gets the clean shots.

Watch these, for most of us, it isn't annoying until below 10FPS

 

[twoskinsoneman]

Keep in mind NVRs have used substreams for years. They wouldn't be able to operate without them.

We see folks come here adding a new camera to an NVR and in multiview it won't show. In troubleshooting we find out they disabled substream on the camera and the NVR will only show substream in multicamera view.

So you said you plan on 10 4MP cameras and 4 4K cameras.

That is 72 MP.

If you want to run 60FPS, then you are running 4,320 MP/s.

Per the wiki once you get above 1,500 FPS, all bets are off.

Based on 72MP, if you run over 20FPS even the top of the line latest computer you could buy (relatively speaking) will struggle...

I don't know if you are joking about 60FPS LOL, but anything more than 15FPS is a waste for surveillance cameras.

We are not making Hollywood movies.

For surveillance cameras, shutter speed is more important than FPS.

Sure 60FPS can provide a smoother video but no police officer has said "wow that person really is running smooth". They want the ability to freeze frame and get a clean image. So be it if the video is a little choppy....and at 10-15FPS it won't be appreciable. My neighbor runs his at 60FPS, so the person or car goes by looking smooth, but it is a blur when trying to freeze frame it because the camera can't keep up. Meanwhile my camera at 15FPS with the proper shutter speed gets the clean shots.

Yeah the 60FPS was a joke but I appreciate your input on smoothness vs clarity.
Thanks to fenderman, and checking out the user manual on one the of cams I got, I see that the substream resolution can be selected.
I want to have viewing monitors with 4 views with the best clarity I can get. Before I decide on what I need for a CPU I guess I'll set up 4 cams on that Dell and see what happens with the different substream resolution options. Maybe I'll be fine with it.

 

[wittaj]

To most, after a day, you won't notice the difference on multi-cam views.

Just like when someone takes a camera off of auto/default settings and puts in a shutter speed to get a clean capture at night, the image gets darker because the faster the shutter, the more light that is needed.

And they hate the image isn't as bright as it was before.

But then after a day or so they get used to it.

And then when a perp comes by they are glad they were able to get a clean capture.

Meanwhile my neighbor that insists on running his cameras on default/auto has a great bright static image at night that almost looks like noon outside, but then the doorchecker on his vehicle was a complete blur and useless.

 

[bp2008]

Hi. I'm the UI3 developer and also the person who wrote the hardware recommendation wiki and recommended multiplying megapixels per second times 10 to determine a minimum cpubenchmark.net score. Sub streams drastically reduce the megapixels per second your system needs to process at any given time, which is why relatively weak systems are still so good for Blue Iris these days.

Anyway, multi-cam streaming to UI3 can be very CPU intensive but there are a lot of things you can tweak to reduce the CPU cost.

• Sub streams are once again the biggest help, as it drastically reduces the number of source pixels that Blue Iris must rescale to create a group video frame.
• Use a conservative frame rate limit for the group stream (e.g. 10 FPS). This setting is found near the top of blue iris's local console. There's a dropdown box with each of your camera groups in it, and a gear icon just to the right of it which opens some group settings including the max frame rate for streaming.
• Use a conservative resolution for the group stream. This is controlled by two things in UI3: 1) The regular streaming quality choice, and 2) you can right click a group stream in UI3 and choose Group Settings and from there you can use a slider to control an additional limit for the max resolution of group streams. Generally I recommend keeping this around 3000 or less. It is only 1440 by default which is quite conservative, but would actually be fairly decent if you're only showing 4x D1 resolution sub streams on one screen.
• As a last resort, you can use hardware accelerated encoding if you have an Nvidia GPU with NVENC. The setting for this is in Blue Iris Settings > Web server > Advanced, where you must configure NVENC individually for each streaming profile (only Streaming 0 is used by UI3 by default). Note that consumer-oriented cards have an encoding session limit but that can apparently be overridden by some kind of software or driver hack, I'm not sure of the details. I have no idea how much NVENC may or may not improve CPU usage.

 

[BenM]

UI3 Help

Just read through this info and tweaked my UI3 settings.
Had a really annoying problem when switching between camera's on my Pixel 7 + Chrome where it would take up to 10 seconds to load the live feed.
Soon as I disabled direct-to-wire the problem was fixed and switching between camera's became instant.

Was also getting constant delay warnings and dropped frames.
My blue iris pc never goes over 10% cpu usage and im connected to a premium 1000/50MBit fibre provider.
I limited the 720/1080p UI3 streaming profiles to 1500Kbps and that problem seems to be resolved with no noticeable quality loss.

Much happier for now.
Thanks BP.