The "Combine or Cut" feature?

Q™

Q™

IPCT Contributor
Feb 16, 2015
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Megatroplis, USA
The "Combine or Cut" feature...I simply don't understand how it functions too well. I bought a 6GB WD Purple drive to use for BI clip storage and I want to use it as sensibly as possible, but I don't understand how the "Combine or Cut" feature works. Any lessons would be greatly appreciated.
 
Q2U said:
The "Combine or Cut" feature...I simply don't understand how it functions too well. I bought a 6GB WD Purple drive to use for BI clip storage and I want to use it as sensibly as possible, but I don't understand how the "Combine or Cut" feature works. Any lessons would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
From the help file...
"The Combine or cut each feature allows you to manage the number of movie files that Blue Iris creates. By default, without this option selected, a new movie is created when recording begins, and is closed when recording stops. That is, each time there is a trigger, and each time there is a "periodic" recording, there is also a new file created. You may then specify the maximum duration of the file in hours and minutes or total GB consumed. If your specified group time evenly divides the day (such as 1/4, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 6 hour intervals), then Blue Iris will align groups on these intervals. That is, when you start recording at 3:29pm with a 1 hour interval, a new clip will be opened at 4:00pm."

Basically, instead of creating a new clip every time there is a trigger it combines the clip...
The upside is less files that window/blue iris has to deal with...
The downside is that currently is screws with the timeline, as the timeline will indicate a recording is present when its not, if say there is a trigger at both the beginning and end of a time interval..I emailed ken about this but it doesnt see to be a priority (I guess until more folks mention it)...
Also if you record to formats other than bvr, you wont be able to play the file until the end of the time interval...
This can also be a problem for folks with some sort of automated file backup because the file will be "open" until the end of the time interval.....​
 
Thanks Fenderman. I did read the Help file several times, but it was confusing. What do you recommend the Combine or cut each feature be set at?
 
Q2U said:
Thanks Fenderman. I did read the Help file several times, but it was confusing. What do you recommend the Combine or cut each feature be set at?
Click to expand...
With BI3 I kept it at 8 hours for all my systems...BI4 presents the timeline issue...I need to do some testing to see if there is a performance hit by simply cutting after each trigger...this can result in thousands of files...
 
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If you have a heavy recording load, combining will keep the number of files from growing out of control. Windows is not very good at managing hundreds of thousands of files in a single directory. The main side effect that I'm aware of is that it will make your Alerts list differ from your Clips list, and playback of clips and alerts is a little quirky especially in a web browser.

I've been doing okay (under a light recording load) with no combine option set, so most of my recordings are 5-20 seconds long and each alert is one clip.
 
Hi, was just looking into the combine video feature of BI4. I've setup a profile so that I can record CONTINUOUS video on-demand (manually). However when I go back into the CLIPS dialog, I can see that it creates numerous individual video files of various file sizes and durations. Is there any way to select multiple CLIPS from within BI4 and have it combine them into a single clip? Or perhaps another maintenance function that combines video clips? Wasn't quite sure how others have accomplished this. Thanks.
 
miles267 said:
Hi, was just looking into the combine video feature of BI4. I've setup a profile so that I can record CONTINUOUS video on-demand (manually). However when I go back into the CLIPS dialog, I can see that it creates numerous individual video files of various file sizes and durations. Is there any way to select multiple CLIPS from within BI4 and have it combine them into a single clip? Or perhaps another maintenance function that combines video clips? Wasn't quite sure how others have accomplished this. Thanks.
Click to expand...
No you cannot combine after the fact... cutting is good..if the clips is too large it can create opening or playback issues ..what is your combine and cut set to?
 
Understood. For my CONTINUOUS record camera profile, the RECORD > OPTIONS values are set as follows:

- Pre-trigger buffer: 5.0 sec
- Combine or cut video each: 8 hrs, 0 mins, 4.5 GB
- Cut video when triggered with break time: 30 sec
 
miles267 said:
Understood. For my CONTINUOUS record camera profile, the RECORD > OPTIONS values are set as follows:

- Pre-trigger buffer: 5.0 sec
- Combine or cut video each: 8 hrs, 0 mins, 4.5 GB
- Cut video when triggered with break time: 30 sec
Click to expand...
Well that explains the cuts..
 
If I would prefer, when manually triggering my CONTINUOUS profile, to not parse the video clip into pieces, how would you suggest I set these parameters? Thank you again for your guidance.
 
fenderman said:
With BI3 I kept it at 8 hours for all my systems...BI4 presents the timeline issue...I need to do some testing to see if there is a performance hit by simply cutting after each trigger...this can result in thousands of files...
Click to expand...
Hi Fenderman,

Did you figure this out? What settings what you recommend now? I have it enabled with 1 hour intervals....but as you said, when skipping in the timeline it will stop every hour. What do you recommend?

Thanks,
 
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