Hello,

I'm new to Blue Iris, currently using the trial version of 5 but looking to purchase the full version if I can iron out these kinks.

I have been using 2 Dahua cameras which have worked flawlessly (H265). Even though one run is 100+m POE I've never seen any interference or connection drop outs.

I recently purchased 2 Pelco D5220 PTZ cameras (second hand) and I'm yet to have both working at the same time or even 1 consistently. I'm after advice on what I might be doing wrong. I've been trying to get these to work for 3 days now!

Issues I've had:
1. Getting them to connect in the first place. I put in the IP address, user and password and click "Find" and it usually detects it well showing it connecting to the camera and reading ONVIF specs. Despite this, it regularly says "no signal, or plays for a bit (see issue 3).
2. Connecting to the substream - I can't work out the right URL even after lots of Googling and automatic identification with iSpy
3. After first connection, it'll display the stream no worries for a few seconds (maybe 5) or until I try and move the PTZ. Sometimes it will recover and display the image again after about 10 seconds, sometimes it just goes to "No Signal". It will often also show the result of the PTZ move once the image comes back. A little yellow ! comes up telling me there's something wrong.
4. More recently, when I change settings, it will display the other camera feed, despite being a completely different IP address. This really confuses me!
5. When I finally get a camera connected, there's a moderate amount of digital interference in the picture (think of a digital tv signal during a storm).
6. I have had both cameras work as expected at different times with various settings (mostly changing Blue Iris settings) but either unplugging the camera and putting it somewhere else or trying to get the second camera to work causes the first to stop working. I have left the settings exactly the same, tried resetting everything but no joy.
7. The onboard time always resets. I pulled the camera apart and can't find a RTC battery. The NTP server never updates. I've tried auto and specifying au.pool.ntp.org and the only way I can set it is with ONVIF device manager. This isn't a big deal because Blue Iris can do the time overlay for me, but it might reveal a cause of another issue I'm having.

Steps I've taken to try to fix:
1. I've updated both cameras firmware
2. I've tried adding camera both HTTP and RTSP IP addresses.
3. I've changed basically every setting in "Network Options" in the camera config. Ticking and unticking the boxes sometimes has a healing effect but nothing seems to make it work consistently.
4. Once I had it working perfectly, I saved all settings as a .reg file. When it stopped working, I deleted the camera and created it again using the .reg file but it didn't work again!
5. Unplugging and plugging back in everything (cameras, router, computer)
6. To try and fix issue 4, I changed the static IP of one camera from 192.168.1.204 to 192.168.1.215 to avoid any potential conflicts with the other camera set to 192.168.1.203
7. I've changed the stream settings from H264 primary to MJPEG
8. I've used different POE power supplies and connected directly to the PC to rule out router problems. When I did this, I could get it connected but with issue 3.
9. I've changed the camera settings from the automatically selected Make: Generic/ONVIF to Pelco Sarix. It works but gives me issue 3.

ONVIF Device Manager
The cameras generally work perfectly using ONVIF device manager. I can connect to both, control with PTZ and the image quality is perfect. This suggests to me there is nothing wrong with the cameras and the issue is Blue Iris. There are a lot more settings in Blue Iris for me to get wrong so this is hopefully the issue. If I can get the camera in Blue Iris with the same settings ONVIF Device Manager uses I'll be happy!


About the cameras:
Pelco D5220 running firmware 1.9.23-2014118-1.9320-A1.10722 (most recent)
Primary Stream - 1080 H264
Sub Stream - 1080 MJPEG
ONVIF 1.02
The terms Spectra and Sarix are also associated to it
Static IPs - All connected via Cat6 to RT-AC68U

About the PC:
Windows 10
HP Elite Desk 800 G1 SFF
i5-4570

For any other poor soul who runs into this issue:

I had the same issue - contacted Blue Iris support (the free version, which basically means you can expect ~4 days for a reply for every email you send (as of Jan. 2022)).

After 3 weeks of back and forth with the support agent, he agreed with my diagnosis that the Pelco camera was shutting off the RTSP stream shortly after Blue Iris connects and the RTSP port could only be re-enabled by rebooting the camera and then sent me off to engineering. (Side note, the RTSP stream clearly works outside of Blue Iris as I was able to stream with VLC for over 30 hours straight with no issues.)

Engineering replied and basically said "Yup, that's what seems to be happening. You can either try turning off the option to send "keep alives", or contact Pelco for updated firmware."

I've tried turning off keep alives and am running the lastest firmware on the Pelco cameras (which are out of service life now), so I've concluded that either I will need different camera software, or different cameras.

TLDR: There's a good chance you can't connect older Pelco cameras to Blue Iris.