Hello,

My lab is trying out the Blue Iris demo to record from several different cameras at the same time for 30-60m sessions. I'm definitely new to the software, so I have a couple questions.

When I press the stoplight button to start recording, I have to wait 30 seconds. Is there a way to remove this wait time?

When I record from 6 cameras at once, set at 30fps and image size 1280*1024, the CPU % increases drastically causing my Dell Precision 3630 Core i3 computer to lag. Are there strategies besides buying more RAM to record from several cameras while keeping the CPU down? I was thinking that turning off the live view while recording might help, but I'm not sure how to do this.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

overit wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 5:21 pm My lab is trying out the Blue Iris demo to record from several different cameras at the same time for 30-60m sessions. I'm definitely new to the software, so I have a couple questions.

When I press the stoplight button to start recording, I have to wait 30 seconds. Is there a way to remove this wait time?

When I record from 6 cameras at once, set at 30fps and image size 1280*1024, the CPU % increases drastically causing my Dell Precision 3630 Core i3 computer to lag. Are there strategies besides buying more RAM to record from several cameras while keeping the CPU down? I was thinking that turning off the live view while recording might help, but I'm not sure how to do this.

You Dell Precision 3630 Intel Core i3 PC is struggling to handle 6 cameras streaming video at 30fps and is most likely recoding each video. CPU utilization is likely being maxed out at 100% which why Blue Iris and your PC are lagging. In order for Blue Iris and your computer to handle 6 cameras, the following changes need to be made:

1. Lower camera frame rate
Lower camera frame rates from 30 fps to 15 fps. While 30 fps will provide a smoother playback, the human eye does not pick up much difference between 15 and 30 frames per second. Each frame requires CPU time to process, so the lower the frame rate, the better it is for your CPU. Keep in mind, you will need to make this change from the IP camera's user interface, not in Blue Iris.

Security Camera Video Recording Frame Rate Comparison
https://youtu.be/W7LYhTPc-Nw

2. Enable "Direct-to-disc recording"
This feature allows Blue Iris to record video directly to the hard drive without re-encoding it. Re-encoding video is extremely CPU-intensive. Direct-to-disc recording is perhaps the most important optimization you can make. From Blue Iris, right click a camera and choose "Camera properties". On the Record tab, click "Video file format and compression" and then select "Direct-to-disc".

3. Enable hardware acceleration (Intel Quick Sync)
Your Dell Precision 3630 Core i3 computer, should support Intel Quick Sync with the Intel Graphics 630 GPU. If your CPU supports Intel Quick Sync Video, then you can use hardware acceleration in Blue Iris to reduce CPU utilization with any camera streaming H.264. Open Blue Iris Settings, then on the Cameras tab, find Hardware accelerated decode. Use the "Intel" option for best results. Restart Blue Iris for this change to take effect. If you are running Blue Iris as a service, you will need to restart the service, or just restart the entire computer.

4. Lower Live Preview frame rate
Enable and lower the "Live preview frame rate" in Blue Iris Settings -> Cameras tab. Enable this option and set it to a low number between 1 and 10. This does not affect recordings.

overit wrote: ↑Thu Aug 15, 2019 5:21 pm ...When I press the stoplight button to start recording, I have to wait 30 seconds. Is there a way to remove this wait time?

In the BI settings, 'Startup' tab, at the bottom Application area, is the 'Delay a green shield...' checked? The default is .5 minute.
Just un check it.

MikeBwca wrote: ↑Sat Aug 17, 2019 5:03 am In the BI settings, 'Startup' tab, at the bottom Application area, is the 'Delay a green shield...' checked? The default is .5 minute.
Just un check it.

OMG, I feel stupid. I answered the LAG issue and forgot to answer the 30 second wait question. Anyway, thanks for catching that MikeBwca.

Thanks so much for the tips! I was able to remove the 30s starting delay by going to Blue Iris Settings -> Startup -> Application and changing Delay Startup from .5 min to 0 min.

I did take your suggestions and enable direct-to-disc recording, lower the "live preview frame rate" to 1, enable Intel Quick Sync, and restart my computer for the changes to take effect. This did all really help lower the CPU during recording.

I am unable to change the frame rate of my cameras from 30 to 15fps. I am using ELP 2.0mp USB infrared cameras that have two settings listed, 30fps@1080P and 60fps@720p. They come with no user interface and no instructions to change the settings, so I am not sure if there is a way to change their frame rate. I have the max frame rate for all cameras set at 30fps in Blue Iris, but if I lower this to 20, I get the yellow exclamation point I believe because my settings conflict with the camera's built-in settings.

The issue I am having now is figuring out which format to export the videos as. When I try wmv, CPU maxes out. With mp4, direct-to-disc gives me an empty file even though I was using mp4 previously without this issue. And with avi, the timestamp is not present in the video, and I am concerned about the 1GB recording limit since my frame rate is so high. I would ultimately prefer avi or wmv files. Would you know why direct-to-disc exporting of wmv is maxing out the CPU?

To be more specific, with avi files, the timestamp only disappears when the videos are exporting direct-to-disc. With 4 cameras recording in avi direct to disc, the CPU stays around 40% not direct to disc, the CPU jumps to around 70%. Is there a setting I'm not seeing to specify that the video should keep the timestamp? Thanks!

overit wrote: ↑Mon Aug 19, 2019 5:51 pm Thanks so much for the tips! I was able to remove the 30s starting delay by going to Blue Iris Settings -> Startup -> Application and changing Delay Startup from .5 min to 0 min.

Rather than specify .0, I would suggest un checking the option. It may be possible that the setting will revert back to default, and the issue will re appear. Also, I'm not sure if there are other settings that may still be effected by leaving this enabled at .0.

overit wrote: ↑Mon Aug 19, 2019 6:07 pm To be more specific, with avi files, the timestamp only disappears when the videos are exporting direct-to-disc. With 4 cameras recording in avi direct to disc, the CPU stays around 40% not direct to disc, the CPU jumps to around 70%. Is there a setting I'm not seeing to specify that the video should keep the timestamp? Thanks!

Your not missing anything. This is by design.
Direct-to-disc recordings will not have BI overlays on the recordings. This is because they are recording directly to disc!

I would suggest turning on the overlay/osd on the cameras themselves via the cameras web gui. This way, you can still have the camera name date/time overlays, and, get them recorded in BI with dierect-to-disc recordings.

I have 6 cameras this way, and, 1 bank/black camera recording encoded with 2 fps - it has overlays... date, time, and, weather info from Weather Underground. Cpu is 18-20% minimized, and, about 30-35% open.

To better understand the direct-to-disk feature you need to consider the alternative....

In all scenarios BI decodes the video streams from the cameras and does its thing including motion detection and alerts:

• Without the direct-to-disk option selected, BI will then re-code the stream including any overlays and write that modified stream back to disk. The disk version will have any BI overlays.

• With direct-to-disk selected, BI will NOT re-encode the stream basically throwing it away and just writes the original stream from the camera to disk thus losing any BI overlays.

In the latter case you save a ton of compute horsepower since there is no need to re-encode all of the streams but the downside is that BI overlays aren't saved to disk. This is why many of us set out cameras to include the timestamp so that we can get them onto disk without having BI insert them.