Blue Iris

Camera frameworks • Connecting cameras - best practices

2022-01-16T16:05:18+00:00

Introduction

This article explains best practices for connecting cameras.

Connecting Cameras
Connecting cameras to BI is a simple 3-step process. If you tried connecting the camera in the past, I would recommend re-adding the camera (start fresh) and following best practices below, NOT trying to get your current setup working. We have found users often check/un-check settings trying to get their cameras to work which then just leads to further complications and troubleshooting. Best to start with default settings and follow best practices. Anecdotal below. Many tickets with similar story.

Then I had issues sorting dual streams on one of the reolink cameras. I ended up just deleting it with a view to re-adding it from scratch. The very second I deleted it the CPU utilization dropped to 2% and the cooling fan stopped.

Camera setup article
This article explains the settings on your camera that are needed to work with BI.
If the camera is speaking Spanish and BI is speaking English, the camera will never connect.
After this article, you should be able to go to your cameras and make the appropriate adjustments to the camera.

Key frame issue
NOT having adequate key frames especially when recording D2D can cause so many issues that I decided to create a link directly to the key frame sub-section in the Camera setup article since I reference it so much in tickets.

Camera encoding settings
Knowing camera encoding settings that work with BI is also a very common issue.

Camera Connector article
This article is about the settings on the actual BI connector to connect to the camera over the network.
This article explains dual streams which is a HUGE CPU optimization and how to connect main and sub streams from your camera.

Step 2 of the connector article explains how to connect via ONVIF to get video and often PTZ controls.
Step 3 explains how to leverage the BI drivers to access additional functionality that may exist on the camera, e.g. a speaker for two-way talk.

Video tab article
This article explains all the server settings that can affect the video stream.

Camera stats
This is a good time to review the camera stats to confirm you have good, healthy video streams.

Submitting tickets

Review the troubleshooting guides in the Cameras section of the Troubleshooting toolkit to self-correct.

The Camera issues article is an example of the needed information to troubleshoot.

Statistics: Posted by varghesesa — Sun Jan 16, 2022 4:05 pm

Camera frameworks • Camera connection error codes troubleshooting

2022-01-04T15:37:19+00:00

Introduction

If Windows provides an error code when trying to connect to a camera, the error code will be shared in the camera window. This provides a direct path to self-correct based on the error code.

The Next steps / Submitting a ticket section at the bottom of the article states needed information to move forward.

Troubleshooting

Camera error code

The error code will be listed in the camera window as well as the Camera settings -> General tab.

Camera errors article
We are documenting known errors and resolutions in the link above. Go to the article, find your error and follow the guidance for resolution.

From the document, the 8000274C error is the Windows socket error:

WSAETIMEDOUT
10060
Connection timed out.
A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or the established connection failed because the connected host has failed to respond.

Basically every time BI tries to talk to the camera, the camera times out.

Find/Inspect Dialog

User also shared the output from the Find/Inspect dialog. I covered the IP address in order to maintain privacy.

The timeout and 12002 error (also documented in the Camera errors dialog) further validates BI cannot talk to the camera.

What changed?

If the camera worked before, the question you have to ask yourself is what changed? Why does the camera no longer work? If the camera worked before and the error message is a networking (Windows socket) error, I doubt the issue is with the BI server settings.

Suggestions:

I would double check how the camera connected. If the camera works via the vendor app, it's a safe bet the camera is fine. If you connected originally via UPnP, UPnP rules are often deleted by routers due to security if the connected device goes down. Try connecting directly to the camera (Step 2).
Reboot the camera. The ports used by BI (third party software) are often NOT the same ports used by camera vendor apps.
Install VLC on the BI server and see if VLC can connect to the camera.

Next steps / Submitting a ticket

If after all of the above, BI still cannot connect, it may be necessary to put the camera on the WAN for remote testing.

Support info: Include support info in body of email. Global settings -> About tab -> Email support button. Copy/paste information in body of email.

Describe the issue.

Camera make/model.
Can you connect camera via VLC.
Screenshot / video is always helpful.

Remote testing
Follow guidelines in link above for remote testing.

Statistics: Posted by varghesesa — Tue Jan 04, 2022 3:37 pm

Camera frameworks • Connector errors

2021-09-02T01:44:11+00:00

Introduction

Not being able to connect cameras and streaming correctly can be a real frustration. This article does a deep dive on how to resolve this one issue.

The Next steps / Submitting a ticket section at the bottom of the article states needed information to move forward.

Troubleshooting
Fortunately live view has a very simple video pipeline:
Camera settings -> Decode -> Console view

Re-add camera

I would first recommend re-adding the camera and following best practices, NOT trying to get your current setup working. We have found users often check/un-check settings trying to get their cameras to work which then just leads to further complications and troubleshooting. Best to start with default settings and follow best practices.

Routine maintenance

Check server health section for any known issues. See if resolving those issues restores stability.

Windows

Anti-virus and Firewall settings can adversely affect network connectivity.
Good to run through all the checks in the Windows tuning article.
Pay attention to the Anti-virus and Firewall settings.

Camera settings

First what are the camera stats?
Are the stats lousy, e.g. 1 fps? Less than 0.5 for the key frame ratio?
If so, you need to revisit the camera settings.

VLC / Third party software

This is the critical step. It rules out network and camera hardware issues. Does the camera work with other 3rd party software. VLC is the ideal test because you can install it on the same machine that is running BI. By doing so, if VLC works, then you know for sure the camera is not the issue nor is the network.
The VLC article has details on how to install/run VLC if you are not familiar with VLC.

Once you know the VLC rtsp string, it easy to add the camera feed to BI. Keep in mind, this will add the camera feed only. If the camera has PTZ or other functionality, access to that functionality will not be available.

If the camera works using VLC but video still does not come through in BI, switch back to Http and try the VLC option. This tells BI to use the VLC stream parser. Otherwise, BI uses its own stream parser. Make sure Use RTP/UDP ports is unselected.

Decode

Turn Hardware acceleration on/off. Works?
Camera settings -> Video tab -> Hardware decode = No.

The Video tab article details ALL the server settings that can affect the video stream.

Next steps / Submitting a ticket

If after all of the above, BI still cannot connect, it may be necessary to put the camera on the WAN for remote testing.

Support info: Include support info in body of email. Global settings -> About tab -> Email support button. Copy/paste information in body of email.

Describe the issue.

Camera make/model.
Can you connect camera via VLC.
Screenshot / video is always helpful.

Server health

Confirm any and all errors in the logs were addressed and resolved prior to submitting a ticket.

Remote testing
Follow guidelines in link above for remote testing.
If remote testing is not possible, see Camera issues article for needed screenshots/information.

Statistics: Posted by varghesesa — Thu Sep 02, 2021 1:44 am

Camera frameworks • No Signal Error / Loss of signal

2021-07-28T13:23:03+00:00

Introduction

Not being able to connect cameras and stream correctly can be a real source of frustration. The Troubleshooting Toolkit deals with problematic cameras from three perspectives. First, is the BI connector configured correctly and is the camera working properly on the network. Second, if an error code is provided by Windows, address the issue directly. This article addresses all the other aspects of the Server, Cameras and Network that can cause issues. This article is largely based on past tickets.

Webinar
If you want to hear the webinar discussion associated with No signal errors, watch the Video Streaming Pipelines article. I speak about this article at the 32:48 mark of the webinar.

Camera stats
The Status -> Camera tab as mentioned in the Camera stats article maintains No Signal stats so you can easily get an idea on how big is the problem. Furthermore, Camera settings -> Watchdog allows you to set alerts when a camera losses signal. This is a good tool to understand the scope of the problem and investigate the issue at the time it occurs.

Version control
If you suspect BI is the issue, go back to a previous version and confirm whether camera starts working.

The Next steps / Submitting a ticket section at the bottom of the article states needed information to move forward.

Troubleshooting

Network

This section deals with the network. Is the network saturated causing camera connection issues? Have your cameras gone bad? Is the issue the network equipment?
Check network tests section.

Server

New server

I understand not everyone is able to run this test, but if you have an additional Windows machine, try running BI on that machine. It's very possible your server hardware is faulty. Always good to restart/reboot the server.

Quote from a previous ticket.

Rebuilt the system and have all cameras working now, not sure what was the problem, but my storage has been tripled and now running the OS on a SSD so worth the effort. Thanks for all the help.

Routine maintenance

Check server health section for any known issues. See if resolving those issues restores stability.

Windows

Start with the Windows Tuning article. BI will not run properly if BI is in conflict with Windows.
Focus on Antivirus and Firewall exemptions. If other software is impeding the ability for BI to talk to the cameras, then of course you will get No signal errors.

Server power settings

Check power savings.

Hardware acceleration

Issue: This user was convinced a BI Update killed his camera streams. Notice all the No signal windows.

Video path: Camera video/feed -> Decode -> Console view (fairly simple path)
Simplify the video pipeline.

Camera video/feed
Revisit your camera encoding settings. The Camera setup article has details.
Since many cameras went out at once, highly unlikely the issue are camera settings on all the cameras.

Decode
Turn HA on/off and see if video works. User turned HA off and all the cameras returned.

Summary
GPU / Hardware Incompatibility
There is nothing more frustrating than doing a BI update and all your camera streams stop. Many users state the BI Update caused the issue. Sharing this story because it's easy to place fault. The above was a real ticket. The customer was convinced the issue was with the BI update until proven otherwise. The issue was actually due to a Windows update.

Rolling back to the previous version or last stable version did not resolve the issue. The customer was convinced the issue was with the BI update. Instead of trouble-shooting, he waited for the next update, hoping for a fix.

Unfortunately, no fix came. The customer then revisited my trouble-shooting email a few weeks later. I first asked the customer to turn off cameras and to observe whether other cameras started working. I suspected the CPU was being overworked. No improvement after disabling all the cameras but one.

My next suggestion was to turn off hardware acceleration. After doing so for the non-working cameras, all came back online!

We suspect the root cause was probably a Windows update or GPU update that disrupted the camera streams. Moral to the story is BI is dependent on many external drivers and software. All these 3rd party dependencies can lead to instability. Second take away is turn off hardware acceleration if a camera or group of cameras constantly has no signal and see if issue goes away. Hardware acceleration is one of the few settings that can affect many cameras at once.

FYI. The software now turns off HA automatically for a camera if it determines the stream is not compatible and this is logged to Status->log as well.

If you want to fix the problem, you can go to the camera settings on the camera and adjust the encoding to a more simple format. See Camera settings article for details.
Or wait for the next driver update that may fix the issue caused by the current driver.

The Video tab article details ALL the server settings that can affect the video stream.

Cameras

WIFI Cameras

WIFI Cameras are problematic and becoming more so with higher and higher resolutions. It's a lot of data to carry over the air. See customer testimonial below.

I had some wireless cams for a year or so and it was a constant issue. I tried changing frequencies and limiting frame rates and it was still problematic. Wireless is great but for cameras it's not practical yet. Just think of how much data you're trying to force in one second. Even at 5 fps with 7 cams, that's basically 35 pictures every second your trying to force though the air plus I'm sure you're surfing the web, etc. Sorry to bring you bad news but the bottom line is Wi-Fi cameras all lose connection. Even a lot of cheap Chinese wired cameras drop out a lot. you just have to live with the "lost connection" Alert.

While working one ticket, a user had 12 WIFI cameras: some indoor, some outdoor, different manufacturers, 2 MP or 5 MP all using 2.4 GHz WIFI. The user did not want to replace all his cameras. Instead he installed 2 BI servers, thinking his BI servers were overloaded. No impact (11 cameras is generally a trivial load for BI software). He then decided to install 2 routers thinking he could distribute the traffic across routers. No impact, there was still the same noise on the airways.

The fix: The user was able to convert 9 of the 12 cameras to PoE.

I took your advice, did the research, and converted 9 out of my 12 cameras to PoE from wireless. Their stability increased to such a great degree that I (gradually) combined all of them onto one license (on a used laptop dedicated to BI). I then did a little bit of tweaking their frame rates and bitrates.

The stats look pretty good to me and the stability seems close to perfect. That has resulted in good news and bad news. Good: You came through for me and now my Blue Iris setup is in great shape. Bad: I now only need one of my two licenses, so I will not be renewing one in a few months.

In case anyone is wondering how to convert WIFI cameras to PoE cameras, from the user:

I bought a PoE switch. This one has 4 ports but you can daisy chain another one off it. Or you can get switches that have more ports. Either way, you must have the switch connected to your router, and then all of your cameras must connect to a switch.
For each camera, I bought an active PoE splitter. It is inserted between the camera connections (power and ethernet connectors) and the ethernet cable that comes from your switch.

That’s all there is to it. There are some restrictions, such as a max of 300’ of ethernet cable between a switch and the camera, and you have to be aware of the wattage required by your camera to make sure your switch can power it, but that’s about it.

Wi-Fi SweetSpots
FYI, WIFI SweetSpots is a tool recommended by a user to measure WIFI strengths at different locations.

Network equipment, BI Server/Windows and Cameras have been ruled out.

Next steps / Submitting a ticket

Summary
Findings from above. We need confirmation to everything above.

Confirm network is working.
Confirm server settings

Anti-virus and firewall settings are correct. Screenshot preferred.
Power settings are correct. Screenshot preferred.
Tested with HA on/off.
Any WIFI cameras.

Server health

Confirm any and all errors in the logs were addressed and resolved prior to submitting a ticket.

Remote testing
Put the camera on the WAN for Remote testing.

Statistics: Posted by varghesesa — Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:23 pm

Camera frameworks • Concept: Blue Iris Streaming Overview

2021-07-06T02:29:15+00:00

Introduction

Blue Iris handles video and audio streams in many ways. It first needs to handle the streams coming from Blue Iris. However, BI also creates video / audio streams to send to different endpoints.

Web Interface (UI3)
Mobile devices
Other web servers or integrations
YouTube
Facebook live
etc

Because BI provides access to camera streams, how a user or integration chooses to use the stream is endless.

Pipelines

The streaming pipelines are a very important concept to understand. It makes understanding the features in BI so much easier. The most common BI pipelines are:

Live view: How camera feeds come into BI for view in the console or to be recorded.
Playback view: How video / audio is played back from recordings
Export to a file is a final common pipeline. While you may not think of saving to a file as a streaming pipeline, in fact, it is and is very similar to the Playback pipeline.

Live View

The key takeaway with live view is the difference in the pipeline between viewing in the console versus viewing from a remote endpoint.

Once a video stream has been decoded, it can be viewed. Thus, in the console the stream from the camera is decoded and displayed.
However, to view on a remote device, the BI server has the responsibility of sending the stream to the Endpoint. In order to do so, BI must first encode the video so that it can be sent over the wire (internet) for the remote device to decode and view.

Playback

Similar to live view, playback is all about playing video as well. However, the source is no longer the camera or live video feed. The source is the recording.

Similar to live view, playback to a remote device also has the extra encoding step.

Recordings

Similar to above, recording to a file also entails a video pipeline.

From the recordings tab, you have to choose the Video file format and compression settings. Most users save to BVR format so I will table the discussion regarding the other formats. In regards to the Video compression section, a very popular option is Direct to Disc because it saves on CPU. The safer choice is to Re-encode using BI software. Users often start with D2D and switch to Re-encode if there are issues.

Export to file

Export to file reads from the recordings (BVR) similar to playback, however Export to file, then saves the contents into another file format, e.g. MP4.

FYI, Decode -> Encode is often referred to as Re-encode. Basically you are converting the video stream from one format to another.

Mapping Pipelines to BI Functionality

Once you understand the BI pipelines, understanding the dialogs and settings becomes so much easier.

Decode

Let's start with Decode. You can instruct BI to decode video via hardware acceleration or BI software. Below are the ways to do so.

Live view to console: The video source for live view is the live camera feed.
- Turn on/off globally for all cameras:
  Hardware accelerated decode = . Global settings -> Cameras tab.
  Hardware decode = Default. Camera settings -> Video tab.
- Turn on/off at camera level
  Hardware accelerated decode = . Global settings -> Cameras tab.
  Hardware decode = No. Camera settings -> Video tab. Turns off HA at the camera level. Overrides global setting.
  Hardware decode = . If you have an Intel processor with QuickSync and a GPU graphics card, e.g. NVidia, you can mix and match HA across both devices.
Hardware acceleration is usually enabled if you have supporting hardware (Intel/AMD processor and/or an NVidia graphics card). By doing so, you can save on CPU usage.
Playback to console: The difference between live view and playback view is the source is the file recording, not the live camera stream.
To turn on HA for playback, enable Also BVR. Camera settings -> Video tab.

Since Playback is much less frequently used than streaming cameras and decoding live streams, Also BVR is off by default.
Furthermore, the playback window provides the seek/scan functionality in the recording. The seek/scan functionality that comes with playback is not conducive for GPUs. GPUs are good for processing continuous streams. The back & forth associated with video search during playback can lead to an unresponsive user interface while the GPU tries to catch up.
Recordings
- Direct-to-disc (D2D): Saving D2D has no decoding/encoding steps because, by definition, the video content from the camera is being saved directly to disk.
- Re-encode: The source for recordings is the live camera feed, similar to Live view.
  Therefore, similar to Live view, decoding in hardware or software is determined by the global or camera HA setting as mentioned above for Live view.

The other pipeline permutations should now be easier to understand based on above.

Live view to remote endpoint
Since the source is the live camera feed, decoding will be based on the global/camera HA settings as explained above for Live view.
Playback to remote endpoint
Since the source is the file recording, decoding will be based on the Also BVR setting as explained above for Playback.
And finally, when exporting to a file, the source is also the file recording, so decoding will be based on the Also BVR setting as explained above Playback.

Encode
Encoding is much easier to understand because it's the same dialog (Encoder options dialog) that appears in many places.

Streaming/playback to remote endpoints: Global settings -> Web server tab -> Advanced -> Configure
Export to file: Convert/Export -> Configure
Keep in mind when saving D2D, motion overlays and text/graphics overlays are stored as meta data. They are not part of the actual video. Therefore you have options whether to include them with the export. When selecting Re-encode, the video will have the overlays if you had them turned on/off when recording. No option to include the overlays later.
Record: Camera settings -> Record tab -> Video file format and compression -> Re-encode -> Configure

Regardless of how you get to the encoder options (below is from the Camera settings -> Record tab), encoding in hardware or software is determined by the HA setting in the Encoder option dialog. Encoding with hardware is experimental. Often it does not work and causes problems. The recommendation is to leave HA = No for encoding.

Summary

The point to this article is to provide an easy way to understand the video pipelines that exist in BI. By doing so, it should now be a little easier to understand how to change BI settings to resolve video stream issues on your system.

If live view from a camera is choppy or jittery, what should I do?
If the playback is entirely black on UI3, what should I do?

All the Gotchas and fixes in the Camera Stream Optimization article will be explained in the context of the video pipelines to provide even more context and understanding to the video pipeline concept.

Statistics: Posted by varghesesa — Tue Jul 06, 2021 2:29 am

Camera frameworks • Camera Streams

2021-02-04T15:18:36+00:00

Introduction
This article is about issues with the quality of your video streams at different endpoints.

This article is NOT about connecting cameras. If you want to know how to connect cameras correctly review the Connect cameras correctly section in the Checklist.

If the camera will not connect, the Camera connection errors article explains how to leverage the error codes to troubleshoot the error.

If the camera was working and has since stopped, the No signal errors article helps identify other causes that can result in cameras not connecting.

This article focuses on the quality of the video streams. The cameras are connected but the video is choppy, stutters etc. How do you address the issue? Suppose the video is fine on the console but terrible during playback or when viewing from the mobile app?

This article explains the concept of BI video pipelines and explains how to easily troubleshoot video quality issues with your connected cameras. For example, if playback is not working on your Android phone /tablet, you will know from this article that the video pipeline is

Recording -> Decode -> Encode -> Playback on device.

By knowing the pipeline, you can now tweak settings associated with each node (Record, Decode, Encode, Device) in order to get the issue resolved.

If you prefer to watch the webinar associated with this article, checkout the Camera Connections and Streams webinar.

Reference: If you want to learn more about how streaming and encoding works, a great reference article was created by IPVM titled "H.264 vs MJPEG - Quality and Bandwidth Tested". If you are not familiar with IPVM, they are a great resource for research and information regarding surveillance and security cameras.

Issue
We receive tickets associated with the camera streams being choppy, lagging in time, stuttering, loses signal or no signal error followed up with, however, the camera is up and working fine in the camera vendor's app.

The issue here is the vendor app is pulling streams from a proprietary port and protocol. The app is also an active solution, i.e. a user opened the app and wants to view a camera so the camera wakes up and delivers a quality, bandwidth optimized stream to the user.

Blue Iris (BI), like all VMS systems, is passively viewing all the time. Because we are a third party solution, we have access to different ports and settings on the available ports are crucial for BI to deliver a quality user experience.

Video Pipeline: Camera settings x BI Settings

In order for BI and your cameras to work well together, you have to take into account Camera and BI settings. The Video Streaming Pipelines webinar complements this section of the article. Once you understand the video pipelines, it becomes easy to understand the settings that can affect a particular pipeline and thus figure out why your video streams are not working.

Video Pipeline

All the Gotchas and fixes to gotchas further below are based on the combination of Camera settings x BI settings. In order to really understand the fix, understanding the video pipelines that exist in BI is pertinent. Once you understand the pipelines, it becomes much easier to know what effect the Camera settings x BI settings have on the pipeline. If you are curious to go deeper, reference the Blue Iris Streaming Overview article.

*** Coming soon: Direct to wire ***
Bypass decoding / encoding completely. Send the camera encoding straight to remote endpoints. The remote device (mobile app, UI3, web site, YouTube etc) is responsible for decoding the stream successfully.

Gotchas: Video Artifacts

As you know, the Gotchas section documents learnings from past tickets. All the below Gotchas provide quick visuals of the issue. This is to allow users to quickly identify their issue and resolution. For those with more curiosity, details on the fix in the context of BI video pipelines is provided. This way users can attain a deeper understanding of BI video pipelines in order to self-diagnose future issues and resolve themselves instead of opening a ticket.

Mobile app
First confirm live view and playback work from the console. There is no point trying to troubleshoot video on the mobile app unless the console is working.
Garbage in = Garbage out.

Live view

Gotcha 1: Video distortion

Issue: Encoding from BI is too complicated for your mobile device.
Video pipeline: Camera video/feed -> Decode -> Encode -> Mobile app
As soon as you introduce a remote endpoint, the Encode node in the video pipeline is introduced.

Fix: Adjust encoder settings. Global settings -> Web server tab -> Advanced -> Configure.

Set quality to 50%.
Hardware acceleration = No. Hardware encoding almost never works with mobile media players. Best to encode in BI software.
In the Advanced section, change Profile to main.

Gotcha 2: Camera Stream Issues

If you believe an update is causing the issue, go back to a previous version, confirm issue goes away and let us know. That is valuable information and may help resolve the issue. However, we may still need to troubleshoot in your environment to understand why the current version does not work.

Isolate the issue

The question here is whether the issue is with the network or the mobile app. To rule out the network, open a web browser on the mobile device and try to connect and login to the web server. Is the web interface working well? If not, the issue resides with your BI server or the network.

Server
An easy way to test whether your server is the bottleneck is to turn the Shield to red. You have shutdown many core functions on the server including trigger, record, alert. Does streaming to the endpoint now work better? Then you know your CPU is working too hard. Otherwise you will need to troubleshoot your network.

Mobile app
If UI3 works fine on the mobile device, then the issue must reside with the video pipeline.
Camera feed -> Decode -> Encode -> Media player on remote device

A common problem is the encoder settings. The above settings generally work across media players.

Playback

The biggest difference between remote endpoint playback (mobile app, UI3) vs console playback is the Encoding node.
Video Pipeline:
Recorded file -> Decode -> Encode -> Mobile device

Before troubleshooting remote endpoint playback, confirm console playback is working. See above.
Garbage in = Garbage out.

Gotcha 1: Playback is a black screen when playing on a remote endpoint (web interface, mobile app)

Reported issues: Playback at a remote endpoint is not working. Other ticket descriptions below.

Playback is a gray screen. Playback is a black screen.
Randomly restarts from the beginning. Playback hangs.

First confirm console playback is working. If so, encode settings is the only node left that could be causing issues.

Fix: Simplified encoding settings. Global settings -> Web server -> Advanced -> Configure (Stream 0)
The Live view section above has a screenshot of Encoder settings that usually works. Most important settings:

Hardware acceleration = No. Critical fix.
Maybe limit bit rate will have an effect.
Maybe Resize output frame width x height will have an effect.

Gotcha 2: Playback on Mobile device is not smooth

Similar to above, the Encoding settings is often the culprit.
The issue could also be with the video player on the device. For example, we have seen tickets where playback was fine on a Samsung galaxy and broken on a Pixel 6. A good test beyond simplifying encoding settings is test whether you can connect to the server from the mobile web browser. If the UI3 interface works then the culprit could be the video player. Browsers use their own video players.

File Export

Export to file has the same complexity as Playback with ONE more layer of complexity, the encoding settings similar to remote access.
Video Pipeline: File recording -> Decode -> Encode -> File (usually mp4)

Gotcha 1: Export to file

Pulsating jaggies happening at consistent intervals, e.g. every 1s.

Reported issue:
The user was attaching a 10s MP4 file with their email alerts.

Symptom: The video starts out fine but consistently every 1s or 2s, i.e. key frame interval, the image gets very pixelated. The key symptom is the fact this happens in a consistent interval like every 1s or 2s implying BI or the stream is having issues processing the key frame.

The Fix:

Video path: Recorded file -> Decode -> Encode -> Save to file (MP4)

Encode: Turn off hwva.
We got lucky. As you can see, the video path has many hops that could cause issues.
Starting from the end and working backwards is always a good strategy.

Next steps / Submitting a Ticket

If still an issue, the Camera issues article explains needed ticket information.

Statistics: Posted by varghesesa — Thu Feb 04, 2021 3:18 pm