Blue Iris

If anyone has experience running Blue Iris on a Windows 10 VM, especially in Proxmox, I would appreciate some help. I had Blue Iris running perfectly on an Intel NUC 8 with an Intel Core i7 8650U and 8GB RAM. Everything was perfect: low CPU usage, low memory usage, video was smooth, etc. Well, I recently purchased a used Dell PowerEdge R720 server with two Intel Xeon E5-2650 processors and 64GB of memory. I created a Windows 10 VM and installed Blue Iris on it. I exported the settings from my NUC and imported them to the Windows 10 VM.

Here is my only problem: video is choppy. When watching live video on the app or a recorded trigger event, it's choppy. At night (when it's black and white), it's smooth. And by choppy, I mean the video skips every second or two. I have everything set correctly: Direct to Disc recording, substreams, etc.

I know the hardware is older in the Dell, but there are plenty of resources and I'm barely using any of them. Would the fact that the processors have no graphics capabilities built into them be the issue? If so, would a graphics card passed through to the VM fix the issue?

Regardless of what worked before, I'm always inclined to triage choppiness starting with the Status log -> Cameras tab. That is the best first step to getting to the bottom of it. I struggled with the same issues, so if you want to post the screenshot here, I can help spot issues.

This link shows the search results from the Self Help documentation on Choppy video and is a good place to start. There's also the Troubleshooting Toolkit which may be helpful.

Sorry this took so long. For some reason, this forum isn't notifying me of replies. Here you go. The Kitchen camera isn't capable of sub-streams and the Front Door camera is turned off for now.

For some reason, this forum isn't notifying me of replies.

Yeah... it's a bummer for everyone.

The camera status is reporting sub optimal key ratios. They should be 1.0 for every camera. Also, 8MP resolution is too high in my opinion. That's a lot of wasted data and I/O demand for most residential uses. Here's how you prove it - dial them all down to 4 like the south garage, and run it for a day. See if you can tell the difference - zoom up as much as you like... And evaluate stuttering and CPU on live and playback. In general, depending on the specific camera and it's sensor specs, a 2MP camera beats the pants off of a 4MP when it comes to night time detection and object recognition. The data flow doesn't choke. Not telling you what to do, telling you my opinion.

The key frame interval should be changed to match the value in FPS, and those two values should be the same for both streams. You drop resolution and key ratio, you'll see a performance increase. If not, you can always change it back.

Thanks. I'll give that a shot. Before I do, I ordered two more powerful processors and should have them in soon. I posted this on the "other forum" and was told that the processors in the Dell server aren't near as powerful as the processor in my NUC. I had the exact same settings (both in Blue Iris and in the cameras) on my NUC and did not have this problem at all.

I'm sure adjusting the camera quality may work, but I always liked having the ability to zoom and still have good detail when needed. Or am I way off in my way of thinking?

Regardless, I must admit the whole key ratio is new to me. It's something I never took notice to nor did I even know what that meant. I'll have to look that up.

IronSheepdog wrote: ↑Wed Mar 23, 2022 2:53 am I'm sure adjusting the camera quality may work, but I always liked having the ability to zoom and still have good detail when needed. Or am I way off in my way of thinking?

Regardless, I must admit the whole key ratio is new to me. It's something I never took notice to nor did I even know what that meant. I'll have to look that up.

So here's the deal... Camera->Blue Iris->Deepstack. A key ratio of 1.0 means that key frames are created for each frame of video. Example:
FPS=20, key ratio 0.5 means that a key frame is created every other frame, and at the end of 1 second there will be 20 video frames and 10 key frames. So what you say? BI relies on synchronized video frames - analysis begins at the first key frame, you want it to start on time. Because Deepstack has to use system resources to process the data coming from BI, and when it's not synchronized DS has to work harder. You want it to confirm after 3 images, not fail after 5 images... CPU cycles...

But aside from the technical schtuff, it's a no brainer, do you no harm, set it once, yer done. Cameras tab is your best friend - basically it tells you if you're giving BI and DS what they need at the rate they can best process it. Checking the oil-ish.

YrbkMgr wrote: ↑Wed Mar 23, 2022 10:05 am So here's the deal... Camera->Blue Iris->Deepstack. A key ratio of 1.0 means that key frames are created for each frame of video. Example:
FPS=20, key ratio 0.5 means that a key frame is created every other frame, and at the end of 1 second there will be 20 video frames and 10 key frames. So what you say? BI relies on synchronized video frames - analysis begins at the first key frame, you want it to start on time. Because Deepstack has to use system resources to process the data coming from BI, and when it's not synchronized DS has to work harder. You want it to confirm after 3 images, not fail after 5 images... CPU cycles...

But aside from the technical schtuff, it's a no brainer, do you no harm, set it once, yer done. Cameras tab is your best friend - basically it tells you if you're giving BI and DS what they need at the rate they can best process it. Checking the oil-ish.

Any other ideas? I just bumped my cameras down to half the quality. I went from .50 to... .53. But, most stayed at .50. I am wondering if it really is just that the processors can't handle it.

Well I just upgraded the processors to two Intel Xeon E5-2680 v2's. There is no change in the recorded video. However, when watching live video there is no choppiness or shuttering. It's mostly smooth.

I think I'm going to run Blue Iris off of my NUC again and see what my ratios are on there, because I've never had this problem with the NUC.

EDIT: After checking out the processors here: https://biupdatehelper.hopto.org/default.html#stats, there shouldn't be an issue. Hmm...

Another update: I just put Blue Iris back onto my NUC and I'm still having issues. The only thing I can think of is that it could be related to DeepStack. I upgraded DeepStack to 2022.1.1 before re-activating Blue Iris on my NUC. Now all of recorded video is choppy. It wasn't like that before. Is anyone else having this issue???

EDIT: It doesn't matter how low I make the cameras' quality or what I set the frame rate to. The keyframe ratio is ALWAYS 0.50, except on the Kitchen camera which is 1.2MP and really old. All of the other cameras have no settings to change the keyframe/iframe rate on the cameras. They are all Foscam, Lorex, Amcrest or Reolink cameras.

ANOTHER EDIT: Lorex won't let you change the frame interval but Amcrest will. So, my two Amcrest cameras are at 1.0 now. Either way, I don't think this is my problem.