Video stuttering, hardware probably underpowered but want to confirm configuration is fine

[seth-feinberg]

I would wipe the C: and start fresh with windoze 10. Only BI gets installed.

ugh. ok but not yet

Close the BI GUI so you are looking at the desktop only, nothing else running. Open task manager. See what your cpu is sucking down then. Basically you are looking at BI running as a service. I hope you set it up that way. 28% cpu on 16 cams is pretty good in my book.

It is running as a service

Noticed you have 32gb of RAM. Are they matching sticks?

Yes they are all matching sticks...

 

[seth-feinberg]

The hardware acceleration was off, because your cpu does not support 265 hardware acceleration..only 264...if turned on when the cam is set to 265 it will not work and may crash BI.

Delays like this are often network or network card related....I would try another switch and an updated driver on your network card.
You also have not confirmed that BI executable and storage folders are excluded from antivirus...

But if I have 1 camera enabled and that is H.264H, should I still suffer the issue? And I'm sorry but I dunno how to confirm if the BI Executables and storage folders are excluded from the virus... with some direction i'd be happy to provide that info (i'm sorry i don't deal with it ever)

 

[seth-feinberg]

Delays like this are often network or network card related....I would try another switch and an updated driver on your network card.

Like just the injector into a cheaper switch? the one it's plugged into is a 1000 dollar switch, not super easy to just try another. However, i totally agree: that was the thing i messed with the most, i feel like it's gotta be firewall related. should I post some rules et al for the VLAN? feels outside the scope of the forum. Could we narrow it down somehow to definitely network?

 

[fenderman]

But if I have 1 camera enabled and that is H.264H, should I still suffer the issue? And I'm sorry but I dunno how to confirm if the BI Executables and storage folders are excluded from the virus... with some direction i'd be happy to provide that info (i'm sorry i don't deal with it ever)

This is a setting in windows defender, a quick google search will walk you through it.

 

[fenderman]

Like just the injector into a cheaper switch? the one it's plugged into is a 1000 dollar switch, not super easy to just try another. However, i totally agree: that was the thing i messed with the most, i feel like it's gotta be firewall related. should I post some rules et al for the VLAN? feels outside the scope of the forum. Could we narrow it down somehow to definitely network?

Its really easy to try a cheap 50 dollar switch. it could be firewall related but in your setup the traffic should not be passing the firewall..an easy way to test is to simply disconnect from the firewall completely and see what happens. But excluding from av is critical and should be your first step. This is outlined in the help file.

 

[Flintstone61]

Why is his Camera IP showing that funny string after the IP address? realmonitor... is he running an NVR as well with the 10.10. addresses?

 

[Flintstone61]

an i7 4770 would play back better if the video writes were split across 2 drives with all those 8 MP cams. .... and if the frames were dropped to 10 were you can get away with it........like any garage cam or well lit area cam. MY LPR cams are running 12 FPS...

 

[wittaj]

Exactly what I am writing about. It's an older but still functional 4770 I7. Not seeing any issues with 16 cams and an older cpu. I run a min of 20fps or 30fps if the cam can run at that. I hate stuttering video playback.

I wouldn't revert back to h.264 if it was me. Turn on h.265 and + if your cams have it. Uses way less disk space. Less writing to the drives as well. Yes you might drop a touch in cpu usage but not huge if anything. It's not night and day going back to h.264 if anything.

Going to CBR will provide better video yes (on paper). Is it noticeable with the human eye after it's been encoded to death, no. You are streaming a super lossy video stream (h.264 or h.265) to BI. You will get better performance on VBR with less drive writing. If you are short on disk space you really need VBR.

Agree turn off hardware utilization. Your cpu lacks the special instructions for it.

I would wipe the C: and start fresh with windoze 10. Only BI gets installed.

Close the BI GUI so you are looking at the desktop only, nothing else running. Open task manager. See what your cpu is sucking down then. Basically you are looking at BI running as a service. I hope you set it up that way. 28% cpu on 16 cams is pretty good in my book.

You might turn off Hyper threading in the BIOS. Make sure your cpu cooler has fresh thermal paste and a good sized cooler. This doesn't matter until you start taxing the cpu out. A poor cpu cooler will cripple a computer. Just like running out of drive space or RAM.

Noticed you have 32gb of RAM. Are they matching sticks? They should be far as the clock timings go per stick. Make sure your RAM is as fast as the motherboard will support. Not in bandwidth but LOWEST clock speed timings.

Summation, you are pushing it with that 4770 I7.

A lot going on here, some of it incorrect as others have already pointed out.

The OP is using 15 FPS in the camera GUI. The 30FPS in the BI screen is not used and irrelevant. That is for USB cameras as stated in the help file.

On the contrary, I do not think he is pushing it with an i7 4770. He is not maxing out the CPU. I suspect there are some other things he can do as well to bring CPU down. I have a 4th gen with double the cameras at a third of his CPU%.

A 4th gen can absolutely support hardware acceleration of H264 video. It is H265 it cannot support. But with substreams now a feature, many have found that the CPU% to offload to HA is more than the savings obtained. Plus he has all 8MP cams, so HA would probably get overloaded anyway on a 4th gen.

He has budget cameras that threw 8MP on a sensor designed for 2MP, so it is underpowered. Using H265 requires more camera processor power and we have seen some budget cams struggle if too many features are being used. H264 is the safe one. Plus his computer cannot use HA with H265 so if a camera accidentally was trying to use HA in BI it could throw issues.

Maybe with your old eyes you don't see a difference with H265 and VBR versus CBR LOL or maybe you have an ideal field of view that you can get by with it. There are tons of posts here where people post problems with their video without motion and once they change it to CBR is all clears up.

And we have seen people get crappy motion captures because the camera couldn't up the bitrate fast enough from VBR to CBR. I had cameras that under VBR would drop into the low 100s bitrate and then with motion jump up to 8,000 bitrate but not do it fast enough to get clean captures.

Storage is cheap - we don't want to chimp out on picture quality by lowering the opportunity to get clean images with VBR. I'd rather lose a week of storage but have good video than go back one extra week but the quality be poor.


H265 in theory provides more storage as it compresses differently, but part of that compression means it macro blocks big areas of the image that it thinks isn't moving. However, it also takes more processing power of the already small CPU in the camera and that can be problematic if someone is maxing out the camera in other areas like FPS and then it stutters.

In theory it is supposed to need 30% less storage than H264, but most of us have found it isn't that much. My storage savings were less than few minutes per day. And to my eye and others that I showed clips to and just said do you like video 1 or video 2 better, everyone thought the H264 provided a better image.

The left image is H264, so all the blocks are the same size corresponding to the resolution of the camera. H265 takes areas that it doesn't think has motion and makes them into bigger blocks and in doing so lessens the resolution yet increases the camera CPU demand to develop these larger blocks.

In theory H265 is supposed to need half the bitrate because of the macroblocking. But if there is a lot of motion in the image, then it becomes a pixelated mess until the codec catches up to the motion. The only way to get around that is a higher bitrate. But if you need to run the same bitrate for H265 as you do H264, then the storage savings is zero. Storage is computed based on multiplying bitrate, FPS, and resolution.

In my testing I have one camera that sees a parked car in front of my house. H265 sees that the car isn't moving, so it macroblocks the whole car and surrounding area. Then the car owner walked up to the car and got in and the motion is missed because of the macroblock being so large. Or if it catches it, because the bitrate is low, it is a pixelated mess during the critical capture point and by the time H265 adjusts to there is now motion, the ideal capture is missed.

In my case, the car is clear and defined in H264, but is blurry and soft edges in H265.

Digital zooming is never really good and not something we recommend, but you stand a better chance of some digital zoom with H264 rather than a large macroblocked H265. I can digital zoom on my overview camera and kinda make out the address number of the house across the street with H264, but not a chance with H265 as it macroblocked his whole house.

H265 is one of those theory things that sounds good, but reality use is much different for many people.

For my use, it was literally only a few minutes difference for the same storage requirement, so I went with which one looked better.

Some people have a field of view or goals that allow H265 to be sufficient for their needs.

As always, YMMV.


Other than knowing if BI is excluded from the anti-virus software, everything else checked out so at this point as pointed out, this is a hardware or driver limitation somewhere in his system. Normally that is where I would have gone first but he outlined in his first post the expensive gear he has so we knew it wasn't the off-name cheapo stuff that has shown to cause problems.

I think they're actually set at 15FPS according to the actual Camera settings:
View attachment 171419

But i read in the amazon description that it was 30fps so I simply set the max image size here at 30:

View attachment 171420
I feel like that shouldn't have an actual impact but please correct me if i'm wrong

The Amazon description is irrelevant as it relates here. You should leave the max rate alone in BI on this screen or have it be just a few FPS higher than what you run the cameras at. But if you set it lower, BI will up it. It doesn't have a big impact as this is more for USB cameras, but many have seen if the FPS here is closer to the camera FPS that RAM usage will go down a little bit.

Thanks for the heads up. Didn't know that. H.265+ works good on my system.

What does BI officially support then?

Maybe you haven't realized that H265+ isn't working well. Post a screenshot from the BI camera status page - is your KEY value 1.00? I suspect it is lower in which case if you are using BI motion, you could miss motion.

Or one day you will wake up to a green screen caused by using the + codec that looks like this:

or

Per the help file:

For the best chance at
compatibility, you should ensure that the stream is encoded as “simple” as possible via
direct camera settings. H.264 “main” profile without manufacturer-specific add-ons such as
+ or “smart” modes is most likely to be compatible.

One can use H265 if their testing shows for their field of view and situation it is better than H264. But keep in mind for a 4th gen that the OP has, HA cannot be used as it isn't supported on that processor.

 

[Flintstone61]

The Matrix

 

[wittaj]

The Matrix
View attachment 171443

Yep I woke up one day to a screen like that and it was one of my cheapo cams that only had H265+. It worked for almost a year and then one day bam the green screen.

Well I thought it worked until I added another camera that oversaw basically the same field of view and realized how much motion the H265+ camera was missing due to the dynamic iframe intervals @fenderman mentioned.

 

[fenderman]

Use a 50 buck switch all you want. Make sure you test it on two computers with SSD drives. Some simple FTP action each way. Should transfer a movie at "roughly" 112MB or so each direction. That is a 1GB switch speed quote. You should see a STEADY 112MB'ish speed both ways.

More importantly is the cable you use. Get CAT 6 in 23 gauge wire. Not the cheapo 24 gauge CAT 5E/CAT 6 mess. The larger gauge copper lowers the signal to noise on the line. Your network will be snappier on 23 gauge copper. Then install some 10/100 IP cams on it. Good to go.

You don't need cat 6 for a camera, cat 5e is way more than needed.

 

[Flintstone61]

word.

 

[wittaj]

I'd rather have pure copper cat 5e than CCA cat 6!

 

[wittaj]

Okay, after testing with h.264 and no plus, in the dark, the software zoom is much cleaner zoomed in than with h.265+. I always hated the zoom under h.265+. It pixelates immediately when zooming darn near. Going with h.264, no plus and CBR from now on. Thanks again wittaj.

Yep, I was there once too LOL. I believed all the hype and set mine to H265 and after being here awhile and learning from others, I did the test I mentioned above and similar to what you just did and was like yep going back to H264. The storage savings isn't worth the degradation.

I do have one camera though that just works better with H265 and fortunately the field of view and purpose is such that it isn't an issue like some of my other field of views.

 

[seth-feinberg]

Boy this thread really escalated while I was AFK. Let me try to address everything I missed:

This is a setting in windows defender, a quick google search will walk you through it.

I did a bunch of googling with the terms you said but mostly it seemed to be steering me to remote set up. I did do this though:


I'm also fine disabling the Wndows Firewall for testing purposes. which I did and the stuttering continued on the single camera I have enabled in BI. I think i should point out that there are TWO firewalls at play. The default included Windows Defender on the Blue Iris PC and the pfsense firewall which acts as my router. My network is AT&T Fiber ONT -> pfsense (running on a Dell 210) -> Unifi Switches -> Cameras/Blue Iris (same switch)

Its really easy to try a cheap 50 dollar switch. it could be firewall related but in your setup the traffic should not be passing the firewall..an easy way to test is to simply disconnect from the firewall completely and see what happens.

I'm a little fuzzy on the mechanics of this test. just plug the Blue Iris PC and a single camera with a POE injector into a cheapo switch? Directly from the pfsense router/firewall? plugging directly from the ONT into a cheapo switch would mean I didn't have DNS or Wifi or ....well anything.

Why is his Camera IP showing that funny string after the IP address? realmonitor... is he running an NVR as well with the 10.10. addresses?

Great question! I'm not sure. I checked all my cameras and they all have it. I think I was having some issues 3 years ago with the autodiscovery so I just figured out the string for the stream and put it in there. I don't have another NVR. 10.10.10.0/24 is my LAN, 10.10.30.0/24 is my cam vlan (that can only access clients in the same VLAN, no internet except for the Blue Iris PC). Do you think this an issue? It seems like the same string as the substream lower in that config:

an i7 4770 would play back better if the video was split across 2 drives

So i have a 6tb hdd and a 240gb ssd in this blue iris machine. That IS one other thing that I changed since last set up. What type of activities should be on the ssd and which on the hdd? E is the 6tb hdd and C is the ssd








I tried to create new folders when I started back from scratch, but maybe leaving the old defined folders is what's causing the issues? Is there a trace dependents? where I can view which of these folders are used where?

Is this page the only place where these folders are used:

Other than knowing if BI is excluded from the anti-virus software

Please let me know if I've satisfied this check on the PC side. I still feel like I'd like to be more confident on the pfsense side....

Use a 50 buck switch all you want. Make sure you test it on two computers with SSD drives

What exactly do you mean re: the SSD drive. What about the SSD drives? just that BI machine has an SSD Drive? that the database is on an SSD Drive? anything else?

More importantly is the cable you use. Get CAT 6 in 23 gauge wire.

Everything is Cat6a cable from Monoprice run fresh when I moved in in 2019. I don't know the gauge sorry...

 

[wittaj]

Oh that could be it.

You broke the number 1 rule of renaming the New, Alerts, and Stored folders and now it could be all effed up.

From the help file:

By default, there are four folders configured to store recordings—Database, New, Stored, and
Alerts. More precisely, only New and Stored are used to store video files; the Database folder
hosts a series of .dat files which are used by the software to keep track of the other folders,
and the Alerts folder will remain empty unless you have asked for hi-res alert images on the
Record tab in camera settings. These folders should not be renamed. The Alerts folder may
not be used otherwise for direct recording, even if you rename it.

So there are 3 folders you cannot rename - Alerts, New, and Stored - According to your screenshots you renamed the folders they go to - they need to be Alerts, New, and Stored. It are the Aux that you can do renaming. Even though you renamed them, internally they are still Alerts, New, Stored and now they have nowhere to go or are going to wrong places.

Also, you should have the database on the fastest drive. For most is it c:\blueiris\db - You could potentially be having issues.

Further, is your stored on the same drive as new? If so, it makes zero since to move files - wearing out the drive faster and using up CPU?

You only move from NEW to STORED if it is going to a NAS. If it is the same drive or drives within the computer, it is best to split cameras across the drives

 

[fenderman]

You must exclude both storage folders as well as the Blue Iris executable please read the help file... You are wasting your time doing any other testing until you do this basic setup requirement

 

[Flintstone61]

also....you could have a situation where there are simultaneous writes of the same cam streams going to 2 different(renamed or created) folders...which will introduce Lag....

 

[IAmATeaf]

Why do you have so many storage folders setup with just an age limit?

How do you manage what goes where? Or have you thought about it and have specific cams writing to specific storage locations?

 

[OakleyFreak]

Just an observation.
Your bit rate is way low for the mpeg level you chose
Low bit rate will cause the jitter you described.
Remember H264 requires more bitrate the H265 on the same mpeg settings.
I would raise the level to at least match this guide.
Most often you will need to bump it up some.
Also view the vof in a browser and look for the jitter. Adjust the bit rate and monitor the live view .
You may find that a higher bit rate eliminates the jitter.

https://www.hikvision.com/content/dam/hikvision/ca/faq-document/H.2645-&-H.2645-Recommended-Bit-Rate-at-General-Resolutions.pdf