Blue Iris

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-23T12:32:14+00:00

G'day,

I rebooted PC overnight and reviewed a number of subsequent trigger / alert recordings and haven't been able to fault a single one (so far)! Playback cadence before during and after an alert as well as any arbitrary time line playback is spot on. This has really lowered the anxiety greatly (no more $ calculations going on in my head) - so thank you for all the advice.

The Windows NTP server is confined by firewall rules to just the camera LAN and a limited range of of IP addresses. I did decide the change the LAN type (NetworkCategory) from Public to Private. In Windows 10 this can be done via one of the network configuration "windows" but in Windows 11 one needs to run Powershell commands: "Get-NetConnectionProfile " and "Set-NetConnectionProfile" to do this: e.g.

PS C:\> Get-NetConnectionProfile (CR) (this will list each LAN profile parameters)
PS C:\> Set-NetConnectionProfile -InterfaceAlias "CamNET" -NetworkCategory Private (CR) (CamNET being the name of the "InterfaceAlias")
PS C:\> Get-NetConnectionProfile (CR) (confirm that the change has been made)

I've downloaded about 2GB of supposedly relevant HP drivers / software / firmware updates for the Elitedesk 800 G4 SFF - and after all of the effort to try and resolve this issue I'm a bit shy of embarking on another wild goose chase - especially as there is no guarantee the that the GPU driver will solve the problem - and then what? Backup, Backup, Backup!

I'm still going to review all of your suggestions and see how things pan out.

Kind regards,

Mark

Statistics: Posted by markoz52 — Thu May 23, 2024 12:32 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-23T12:19:10+00:00

Pogo will be displeased

To the contrary, I'm delighted the OP has arrived at a solution for his particular issue. Trust me, I share his frustration, albeit at the other end of the stream in the 4K UHD realm rather than the sub stream..., with a 22 camera system, not just 2 cameras running with the full horsepower of an 8th Gen box.

And while a solution to the issue has been realized, I'm still of the opinion that the particular remedy has simply eliminated a symptom of an underlying codec compatibility (or driver?) problem that continues to exist. What has effectively occurred by disabling HA support is the removal of any GPU effect on the decoding of the streams -- which it is otherwise highly developed to do (and does) quite effectively and efficiently in a correspondingly developed and configured environment.

Where it begins to get weird with Blue Iris (in my experience) is when 4K UHD and/or H.265 demands are placed on the software's ability to effectively decode those streams with or without Intel's QuickSync HA..., which Blue Iris is purported to be designed around in the first place. In this particular instance, the same result could have probably been achieved by simply changing the sub stream encoding to H.264 as suggested, thereby eliminating any H.265 GPU decoding weirdness of the sub stream anyway. It would be interesting to see if the same results are achieved by doing so just for shits and grins.

But back to the driver sensitivity of Blue Iris..., assuming Intel display drivers are what was being referred to. Where exactly is this selection of drivers available for download into one's handy iCore toolbox for compatibility testing with Blue Iris's sensitivities? A quick search yields a grand total of 1 currently available driver spanning the 6th through 10th Gen CPU/GPU family for the Windows 64bit platform dated 12/29/22 -- which admittedly seems quite dated to me as processor and graphics advancement goes.

This also seems a bit dated from the 'What's New' section of the BI5 documentation:

"As we are all interested in getting the most out of our CPU clock cycles, these newer development tools combined with new code optimizations will
combine to contribute to a more efficiently running system. Work will continue with Intel and Nvidia to further leverage graphics hardware assistance."

It would be interesting to know when the last substantial updates actually occurred in this area relative to UHD/H.265 (or any display/codec related) code optimizations, particularly with Intel. And I don't even run H.265 except for a couple Reolinks that don't have an H.264 option at 4K.

But if anyone has the magic bullet for smoothing out my 4K streams with or without hardware acceleration using an Intel i5 9500 w/16GB RAM, you'll be the first.

Bottom line, I'm happy for the OP. And I'm sure his live 4K main streams are as smooth as water flowing. Aren't everyone's? LOL

Statistics: Posted by Pogo — Thu May 23, 2024 12:19 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-22T17:24:23+00:00

Pogo will be displeased

Do reboot it to see if it still works though

I originally had a bit of trouble getting the Intel gpu acceleration to work, and tried a few drivers until it did. Due to that, if I had any issues, it would be one of the first things I turned off for testing. I certainly don't pretend to understand all of this stuff, that's for Ken and the team, but I am an Engineer with a full mental toolbox of "what happens if I try this" to throw at issues as well as a parts box with lots of spares.

NTP: I found that different cameras could only use different NTP sites. I tried running an NTP server and that still only worked with half of my cameras. I then tried the BI5 timestamp, and that works well, and all of my cameras are synchronised. Extra CPU loading was minimal. Since my cameras are now on an isolated from internet LAN, I think this is my best option.

Ask as many questions as you like. We love sorting things out

Statistics: Posted by TimG — Wed May 22, 2024 5:24 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-22T13:15:07+00:00

Dear All,

A quick update following one your suggestions - to turn off "Hardware accelerated decode" to "No" (was "Intel + VPP") as well as changed each camera's "Hardware decode" to "No". I did restart both cameras but have yet to reboot the PC.

For a number of Alerts / Triggers this evening since the change that I've reviewed - All substream playback cadence is normal - no stutters etc. in both forward and reverse at 1/2x playback speed. CPU and GPU usage has hardly changed (with no alerts currently being triggered or played the console is showing 0% 2%)

This is the first positive "result" I've had since "discovered" this anomaly. It's no fun when things don't work as intended especially when significant thought and planning has been invested.

A final point: The 4k camera resolution was to reduce the cost and difficulty of installing more cameras and still being able to identify people etc. clearly when triggered. What I didn't realise is just how important the 10 to 20 seconds substream video can be before triggering to determine a sequence of events. I have tried continuous recording of only the mainstream but the file sizes just get too big ( just wish the BI would allow recordings to be stored in /New/Cameraxx folders and not just lumped together!). The alternative is increase the "Pre-trigger record time" to say 30 seconds and to only record the mainstream "When triggered".

Cheers

Statistics: Posted by markoz52 — Wed May 22, 2024 1:15 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-22T05:04:29+00:00

Many thanks for your many and considered replies. It's going to take me a while to work through them and provide feedback requested.

The HP Elitedesk 800 G4 SFF is an ex corporate model - refurbished and loaded with an HP tweaked version of Windows 11 Pro by HP - purchased to replace my ageing Z68 / i7 2600K PC as my Blue Iris server. The plan was to also add more cameras and get CP.AI to do some heavy lifting. After doing my typical install of BIOS, Windows and Driver updates and then installing useful stuff (antivirus, Firefox, Z-Zip, etc.) I used it as a general PC for a couple of weeks before I deployed it as the BI Server.

It was while examining a BI Alert and wanting to see a what was happening the 30 seconds before the high resolution (main stream) recording that I became aware of the substream playback issue - and then went on to discover that the substream playback is problematic at almost any time and independent of trigger or alert recordings - for either of the two cameras. Sometimes I get hopeful after a few seconds of good cadence to then suddenly observe a jump of 2 or more seconds, or after a "long" second to see the next two or three "seconds" flick by in rapid succession. Watching a single substream playback stuck image for 9 seconds with BI set up to record at the camera frame rate is not acceptable. I would expect that BI would actually record every frame.

I've subsequently tried multiple NVME and SATA SSD's and deployed Microsoft Windows 11Pro and Windows 10 Pro software along with multiple versions of BI (both stable and latest). This also includes a "debloated" Windows 11 Pro (https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat). To date, none has produced a glitch-free substream playback.

I've referred to the problem as a "playback" problem. But after trying the software on the Asrock Z390 / i5 9600K and then viewing the recordings on the Elitedesk I'm reasonably convinced that this is a recording problem.

I had a brief try-out of Amcrest's "Surveillance Pro" recording software (internet isolated Elitedesk 800) - the playback worked just fine - but I didn't spend too long analysing it.

Apart from multiple different boot drives, I've tried an NVME for intermediate "New" storage and three GbE NICs without improvement. I haven't changed the CPU, RAM or motherboard.

I'll make up a prioritised list of suggestions to try and work through them over the next few days,

Statistics: Posted by markoz52 — Wed May 22, 2024 5:04 am

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-21T21:13:15+00:00

Because during my own personal fault finding, I found BI5 gpu acceleration to be highly sensitive to drivers, making it the first thing to turn off while fault finding trying to find the problem.

I think that's a reach even by the most diehard BI purists. Sensitive to drivers?

But I'll agree with the premise that if GPU support being implemented is somehow problematic, there's another problem somewhere -- most likely under-developed codecs in the software itself. But nobody wants to say it.

And if hardware acceleration is suspected as the source of a particular BI performance problem, try the same source with VLC or any higher quality NVR and see what you get. My personal troubleshooting of 4K instability issues with BI have resulted in stable streams when using other platforms -- and that even includes Reolink 810s. And I've done A LOT of troubleshooting in this area with multiple iCore processors with and without QuickSync being in the mix -- and still haven't figured out why 4K streams stop on every I-frame regardless of the interval and stutter and tear with most motion of any significance regardless of frame rate or bit rate. I've also not heard or read a reasonable explanation anywhere from anyone other than it's never a BI problem when everything points to the fact that it clearly is.

And since I'm on a roll here (LOL), I still can't help wondering why someone buys high end cameras just to dumb them down so they'll work with Blue Iris. Makes no sense to me whatsoever regardless of the specific application for the camera. Optimizing their capabilities for given situations should be the goal, as should optimizing the software to handle the demands of newer higher end devices (and Intel GPU developments) instead of releasing a new patch every day for something else much less important to the majority of the software's users.

But back to the subject at hand...,

A couple other things to look at would be how CCleaner is setup and whether any other scheduled processes are in the mix.

Is NTP for sure set up for for timely sync among all devices?

How about some screen shots of the Trigger, Record, and Alert settings?

And how about the actual LAN settings? How was the temporary test setup different than the G4 box network-wise?

What's going on in Task Manager?

BTW, the Q370 chipset is probably the most widely used of most Blue Iris systems precisely because of its wide support of both 8th and 9th Gen iCore Processors along with enhanced GPU support to compliment the integrated UHD 630 Graphics which comes in very handy for CPAI integration. But hey, lets just turn it off if something else doesn't work right.

I'm still going with a settings issue, but who knows. It's Blue Iris..., and the latest greatest.

Statistics: Posted by Pogo — Tue May 21, 2024 9:13 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-21T20:50:38+00:00

G'day,

Did you buy the HP G4 Elitedesk 800? I'm having problems with mine ... substream recording stutters / skipped / dropped frames.

Kind regards,

Mark

Have you done a complete OS reinstall from microsoft media to start as a foundation on which to build?

Statistics: Posted by HeneryH — Tue May 21, 2024 8:50 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-21T19:28:44+00:00

Besides keeping that pesky GPU % down to around 5% for twenty cameras and because IPCT wittaj preaches it until Hell will freeze over, how so?

Because during my own personal fault finding, I found BI5 gpu acceleration to be highly sensitive to drivers, making it the first thing to turn off while fault finding trying to find the problem. You can always turn it back on again

Anyway, when I did my experiments with sub-streams on all cameras, I found the gpu acceleration actually increased the cpu load slightly when enabled with my i7-8700K. I expect it to make a large difference if you don't use sub-streams. YMMV.

Statistics: Posted by TimG — Tue May 21, 2024 7:28 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-21T17:54:17+00:00

I would tend to agree..., not the hardware, anyway. Drivers, maybe. BIOS, highly unlikely. Configuration, probable.

I guess my main question would be why all the attention being paid to the sub stream quality in the first place if the main stream is performing as it should..., which I personally find remarkable at 4K H.265 at ANY frame rate with BI to begin with -- even with the 'I-frame set to 1'. LOL

What's being described initially seems like a codec issue on one end or the other..., imho. If Smart Codec is enabled in the Amcrest software it should be disabled as should any other proprietary enhancements such as the '+' setting -- and possibly even a sub stream audio mismatch (just to throw that in for good measure.) On the other hand.....

And as I always say, break it down to the basics.

The issue is being portrayed as primarily a timeline and recording issue with everything otherwise running smoothly as a live stream when solo'd on the console. That takes us to timeline and trigger/alert settings for some investigation into how and why they may be affecting things. If clips are acting the same way, I'd be looking at trigger settings possibly causing some of the inconsistencies. If clips are smooth, then it could be an alerts setting that only applies to the timeline viewing and recording of those alert based clips. But again, why just the sub streams..., and are we sure the main streams are normal?

Try a basic setup based solely on motion triggers with no fancy stuff. Just a zone with a trigger. Set the trigger to last at least 10 seconds before re-triggering and allow at least a couple minutes of maximum duration to accumulate multiple triggered events in a single clip. This will allow examination of things without alerts being in the mix. Just set alerts to 'never' in the camera config. Do this without the main streams enabled or use the sub stream link for both streams in the cam config to ensure the sub stream is what's being recorded. View the results in the Clip Viewer, not the Timeline. They will be basic motion triggered clips of the sub stream, not alert clips which are essentially just index reference locations for the timeline anyway.

But before doing any of this, set the sub streams to H.264 as was already suggested to see if that may have any effect. I think it's a little deeper than that, but H.265 does do some weird stuff in weird places, including iCore Processors and definitely Blue Iris, so worth a try.

I would also try disabling gpu acceleration, as that can be troublesome.

Besides keeping that pesky GPU % down to around 5% for twenty cameras and because IPCT wittaj preaches it until Hell will freeze over, how so?

Statistics: Posted by Pogo — Tue May 21, 2024 5:54 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-21T13:21:33+00:00

Almost certainly NOT the pc.

Statistics: Posted by HeneryH — Tue May 21, 2024 1:21 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-21T08:45:47+00:00

Video drivers can also cause these types of issues. If not in the latest try the latest but make sure you get the drivers from the HP support site for the model, if that makes no diff then try going back a few versions.

Statistics: Posted by IAmATeaf — Tue May 21, 2024 8:45 am

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-21T07:46:17+00:00

Re: Stuttering video playback

Today I had to move the M.2 NVME SSD and Storage drive back to the HP Elitedesk 800 G4 SFF PC and return the Asrock Z390 based PC to its owner.

I had another look at the HP PC's BIOS - reset it to Factory defaults etc. Stutters / Freezes / Poor Cadence still evident in all substream recordings.

I also played back the alert videos that we recorded on the Asrock Z390 based PC to find that the playback of all those recordings that I sampled played smoothly. No dropped frames / stutters / freezes etc. The cadence of the "camera time" as well as the BI playback time was what I would have expected.

My deduction that something is going wrong with either the hardware and BI software - but WHY only for the substream? And why on the HP Elitedesk 800 G4 SFF PC?

So I'm at a bit of a loss here - is the PC a dud? I can't afford to build a new PC from parts. Does that mean that similar vintage PCs using the Q370 chipset are suspect too?

Looking forward to your feedback.

Mark

Statistics: Posted by markoz52 — Tue May 21, 2024 7:46 am

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-21T05:17:12+00:00

I would also try disabling gpu acceleration, as that can be troublesome. Let us know if either of these help.

Statistics: Posted by TimG — Tue May 21, 2024 5:17 am

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-20T23:31:48+00:00

Switch to H.264 on the original setup and see if that helps. There's also more CPU/GPU BI config busywork going on than is typical which may actually be confusing the issue.

Seems like a lot of hoops to jump through for your secondary solution otherwise.

Statistics: Posted by Pogo — Mon May 20, 2024 11:31 pm

Re: BI Computer Purchase

2024-05-20T21:50:38+00:00

Two Cameras:
Name MPixels CODEC FPS/key Bitrate Sub FPS/key Sub Bitrate
Cam1 8.3/0.3 H265 15.06/1.00 812.4 kB/s 15.10/1.00 77.7 kB/s
Cam2 8.3/0.3 H265 15.10/1.00 797.6 kB/s 15.08/1.00" 76.5 kB/s

The fail for me is recording playback of the substream is the significant number of frames begin dropped to be useless.e mainstream alert recordings do not suffer from this problem. BI Console views of substreams (just 2 cameras) or single camera (mainstream) don't show any freezing etc. as observed by the cadence of the camera date and time overlays.

One could call them substream "Stutters" or "Freezes" of between 0.5 and 4 to 6 seconds observed as follows:

- Timeline stopping and starting (jumping) during forward or reverse playback (for single or multiple camera view)
- Playback speed / date & time box - time freezing and then jumping to a second or two, but also up to 4-6 seconds later
- Playback Camera indicated time (camera overlay) also freezing and jumping matching the BI playback time
- Clip exports to .mp4 also shows the same issues on playback

There is nothing special about the Elitedesk 800 G4 SFF PC:
* 16GB RAM, 500GB M.2 NVME SSD, 12TB Seagate SkyHawk AI Storage HDD
* Intel I210-T1 GbE NIC (for dedicated Camera LAN) [Motherbaord NIC for Internet / remote access]

The recording is H.265 direct to disk "Continuous sub + Triggered" plus "Record dual-streams if avaialble"
* No AI installed.
* CPU usage as per the console is typically 2% GPU 3% (or even 0% 2%)
* Receive buffer currently at 12MB. No change at 30MB
* Hardware decode is set to Intel+VPP, Any GPU, Also BVR checked
* Cameras: 2 x 4k Amcrest PoE units, 15 fps, key-frame rate is 1

Software:
* Windows 11 Pro with Blue Iris 5.9.0.7 plus a few others: Samsung NVM Express Driver, Samsung Magician, Firefox and CCleaner. Antivirus is Microsoft's Defender.
*The only s/w modifications have been to enable the NTP Time Server for the camera LAN (and the two required firewall rules).

I've run every HP BIOS included and USB (HP) bootable diagnostic I can find without fault. Userbench results are as follows:

UserBenchmarks: 18 April 2024
CPU: Intel Core i7-8700 - 90.2%
GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 630 (Desktop Coffee Lake i5 i7) - 4.4% [This is "normal" for Intel UHD 630]
SSD: Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe PCIe M.2 500GB - 201.5%
HDD: Seaget SkyHawk AI 12TB - 67.2% (Read: 124MB/s, Write: 120MB/s, Mixed:93.8MB/s)
RAM: Samsung M378A1K43CB2-CTD 2x8GB - 67%
MBD: HP EliteDesk 800 G4 SFF HP 83E1

This HP PC uses the Intel Q370 chipset. I can't find any references to problems with this chipset - and it is the same chipset as used by many Dell (Optiplex) and Lenovo models which seem to be popular as BI servers.

I've tried substream resolutions of 640 x 480 (VGA) and 720 x 480 (D1) over a large range of bit rates without any improvement.

In desperation I moved the Boot M.2 SSD, the Storage HDD and the Intel GbE NIC to a borrowed PC: Asrock Z390 motherboard (i5 9600K, 32GB RAM). After an update / reboot to fix motherboard drivers etc. Blue Iris has run perfectly. All substream and mainstream playback appear to be faultless. The MP4 export also doesn't reveal any dropped frames / stutters / freezes.

I used to run BI on a Z68 motherboard based PC (i7 2600K, 16GB RAM, SATA boot SSD, NVS 310 graphics) with significant s/w bloat (full MS office Pro, Photoshop, Premier, Ominpage Ultimate, etc.) and didn't have this problem. Even running this "old" PC with BI simultaneously with the HP Elitedesk connected to the same cameras the old PC continued to work and record without freezing / stuttering. The cameras and switch were just fine with a double load.

Kind regards

Mark

Statistics: Posted by markoz52 — Mon May 20, 2024 9:50 pm