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.

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

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

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.

Almost certainly NOT the pc.

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.

TimG wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 5:17 am 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?

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.

markoz52 wrote: ↑Mon May 20, 2024 1:20 pm 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?

TimG wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2024 7:28 pm 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.

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,