Video Quality in Multiview

macster2075 · Post by **macster2075** » Fri Feb 11, 2022 10:27 pm

Hello,
I have been having this issue for a while now and have yet to find a solution or a reason as to why this is happening.
Blue Iris v. 5.5.4.5 (I've tried other versions).

I recently bought 3 Amcrest 5MP cameras and they work great. No issue with BI for the most part.
I also have an Amcrest 4MP doorbell and again, works ok with BI.

The issue I am having is.. When I view the cameras on the BI PC in multi-view screen/group layout, the quality of the cameras is very bad as shown here.
Picture 1 is how it looks with everything on default.
In order to make it look better is by enabling Anamorphic and setting it to 1920x1080 AND set the aspect to 3:2/Scale to fill
All my other cameras work fine and this only happens to all the 5MP cameras.

I do not use substream yet, so the blurry image is not the sub. Even the Amcrest 4MP dorrbell looks great.
If I click on the camera and view it full screen, it looks sharp and clear, but not on a smaller sized window...but why and why doesn't that happen to any of my other cameras?

: blurry.jpg (162.98 KiB) Viewed 6402 times

: clear.jpg (132.38 KiB) Viewed 6402 times

Post by **YrbkMgr** » Tue Feb 15, 2022 12:05 am

The reason could be a few things - to get to the bottom of it, post screenshots of:

1. Blue Iris Console - the entire view
2. Camera Settings --> General Tab
3. Camera Settings --> Video Tab --> Configure --> Network IP Camera Configuration dialog
4. Video settings from the camera's UI (encoding, etc)

Based on my experience, and I'm not an expert, my first inclination is that the camera settings are wonky. If you post those screenshots, it'll reveal if it's the focus should be the camera or BI. And adding a little color to the equation... in a previous thread, you posted that you were using sub streams, and concerned about the image res. Sub-stream resolution. So let's see where you're at.

macster2075 · Post by **macster2075** » Fri Feb 18, 2022 6:25 pm

Hi,
Thanks for the response. Blue Iris support responded and Ken mentioned scaling.
So, the quality issue I was experiencing has been "resolved" by setting the scaling to Bicubic

I understand this will increase the cpu significantly, but it makes the camera look so much better.
I stopped using sub stream because it just looked too pixelated for my liking, but it looked even worse when I was not using sub stream...but now with this setting, I can use sub stream and now the cameras look decent when viewing in group layout/multi view.

I have a total of 6 cameras and my cpu hovers in the teens so i think im good with that setting.
The weird thing is...why does this issue only happens with my Amcrest 5MP cameras?
None of my other cameras have this and they look good whether viewing them full screen or in group layout.

Post by **YrbkMgr** » Fri Feb 18, 2022 7:49 pm

Thanks for the follow up. As far as the Amcrest 5MP cameras, first place I'd look is in the camera itself and see what video encoding it's using. Should be h.264 with no +,P, etc. modifiers.

macster2075 · Post by **macster2075** » Fri Feb 18, 2022 8:37 pm

These are the settings in the camera gui for all my Amcrest cameras
This is the way I have it so it looks decent. No issues with my Amcrest doorbell 4mp.

Post by **YrbkMgr** » Sat Feb 19, 2022 12:39 am

What happens if you drop the camera resolution to 2MP? Feed BI less to scale... My hunch is that you are observing a scaling anomaly because your cameras resolution is huge. That's a lot of data that BI has to scale real time, and optimize dynamically at all display resolutions. I'm betting it goes away at 2MP.

macster2075 · Post by **macster2075** » Sat Feb 19, 2022 8:02 pm

Changing the reso to 2mp (1080p) does seem to help a lot, but makes me wonder why buy 5MP cameras if I won't be able to use its full capacity?
While reducing the reso help, but then when viewing the cameras full screen it's not as sharp and clear, obviously since i'm cutting its reso in half.

macster2075 · Post by **macster2075** » Sat Feb 19, 2022 8:06 pm

Now, I should also say this...in order for the 2MP reso to look OK.. I have to leave the Scaling setting at Bicubic, if I set it to Fast, it looks like crap.

macster2075 · Post by **macster2075** » Sat Feb 19, 2022 8:34 pm

Another observation when it comes to sub stream.
When using sub stream, I notice AI detecting is not as good. It sometimes misses motion as it completely misses motion when someone is walking in front of the camera at about 40-50 feet away. That rarely happens when not using sub stream. Is it because of the lower resolution the AI has a harder time identifying what's causing the motion?
I would guess so since it's hard to tell what is passing by on a blurry screen.

I have set the setting to High in Deepstack, but it still misses motion. It's not cancelling per say, it's just not detecting motion as much when set to sub stream.

Post by **YrbkMgr** » Sat Feb 19, 2022 10:41 pm

macster2075 wrote: ↑Sat Feb 19, 2022 8:02 pm Changing the reso to 2mp (1080p) does seem to help a lot, but makes me wonder why buy 5MP cameras if I won't be able to use its full capacity?

It's good that you wonder why to by a 5MP camera. For the average consumer it's just marketing hype. There's a use case for them but you have to know what you're doing. A 2MP camera will beat the pants off a 5MP when it comes to nighttime performance and performance in general.

While reducing the reso help, but then when viewing the cameras full screen it's not as sharp and clear, obviously since i'm cutting its reso in half.

When viewing in full screen, right click on the camera. Main Stream when Full Screen - if it's not enabled, enable it.

I have to leave the Scaling setting at Bicubic, if I set it to Fast, it looks like crap.

If you're going to troubleshoot it, keep it at Fast. If you start changing things, there are too many variables to control. I can tell you from my own bitter experience that "guess and check" - enable this and see what happens... is rife with peril.

I hope you don't mind me saying so, but "looks like crap" doesn't help much. What would help is understanding what steps you take to evaluate your image. Screen shots/steps, etc. In the spirit of Jerry McGuire, no one knows what you're looking at or how you got there.

Video Quality in Multiview

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