5.5.6 - March 12, 2022 - Major UI3 browser client release, timeline playback is now available!

[bp2008]

I just upgraded all of 3 of my installations to 5.5.6.20, and I'm generally very pleased. Timeline view in UI3 has improved the overall function of BI by 10x.

Questions:

1. The Next Clip and Prev Clip buttons take me to the start of the next/prev "clip" where "clip" appears to be defined as either the next Alert OR the start of the next recording period (clip). Is there a way to ignore the start of New clips and skip only to the next Alert? I thought I had stumbled on this a few days ago, but now I'm back to Prev and Next going to the start of each clip and/or each Alert.
2. Is there a way to force a 3 x 3 layout of my cameras, even though I have only 8 cameras currently? Based on the way the cameras correspond to their physical locations, rows of 3, 3, and 2 cameras make a lot more sense than 2 rows of 4 cameras.

1. Nope, UI3 doesn't control that, so there's no configuration available.
2. Yes, right click and choose Group Settings, then tweak the frame size to try to achieve a layout that works for you.

 

[TheWaterbug]

2. Yes, right click and choose Group Settings, then tweak the frame size to try to achieve a layout that works for you.

Perfect! That's exactly what I needed. Thanks!

1. Nope, UI3 doesn't control that, so there's no configuration available.

Can you expound a bit on what that means?

 

[bp2008]

Perfect! That's exactly what I needed. Thanks!

Can you expound a bit on what that means?

When you push one of the next/prev clip buttons on the timeline, UI3 just opens a new stream at the current position and in the request UI3 says to go to the next or previous event. It is entirely up to Blue Iris to decide what that means.

 

[TheWaterbug]

When you push one of the next/prev clip buttons on the timeline, UI3 just opens a new stream at the current position and in the request UI3 says to go to the next or previous event. It is entirely up to Blue Iris to decide what that means.

I think I understand.

But UI3 also knows where each alert is in time, because it draws the red lightning bolts on the timeline. Can UI3 request a clip starting at a given time?

 

[bp2008]

I think I understand.

But UI3 also knows where each alert is in time, because it draws the red lightning bolts on the timeline. Can UI3 request a clip starting at a given time?

Yes, but the timeline data which tells UI3 where to draw the alert icons is very limited in its scope and precision, making it poorly suited for this purpose. The experience would be poor if your timeline was zoomed in too far (such that the next or previous alert time was unknown to UI3) or zoomed out too far (such that the precision of the alert timing data was too low).

 

[TheWaterbug]

Yes, but the timeline data which tells UI3 where to draw the alert icons is very limited in its scope and precision, making it poorly suited for this purpose. The experience would be poor if your timeline was zoomed in too far (such that the next or previous alert time was unknown to UI3) or zoomed out too far (such that the precision of the alert timing data was too low).

Ah, that's too bad. Perhaps if the BI folks are reading this, making precise time data available to UI3 would be a good enhancement.

 

[bp2008]

Ah, that's too bad. Perhaps if the BI folks are reading this, making precise time data available to UI3 would be a good enhancement.

Actually for the first month of timeline development in UI3, I assumed I would be getting precise time data and having UI3 do as much of the timeline playback control logic as possible. But then when the BI developer started getting involved, he ignored my plan and built it with the opposite expectation: UI3 (and other client apps) would be as dumb as possible, not keep their own internal clip databases, and just ask the server for everything.

We're honestly better off this way anyhow, because the loading time was super slow when I had UI3 exhaustively loading all the full-precision clip and alert data for the visible timeline area, and there were lots of synchronization issues that are avoided with the current approach.

 

[TheWaterbug]

I've really been enjoying the timeline playback feature. It's made reviewing daily footage so much easier and efficient, so thank you again!

I also just recently stumbled upon the UI setting for Dynamic Group Max Resolution (strongly affects server CPU usage). Can you explain in some detail how this works? I'm running UI3 on a 1920 x 1080 monitor, but I still see very visible improvement in IQ when increasing the DGMR from, say, 2500 to 3000.

I'm viewing 4 cameras, each 2592 x 1952, and they're arranged in a single row of cameras.

Also, if you're accepting feature requests, here's my current wish-list:

1. Reverse playback in timeline view, even of multiple cameras. Would this be ridiculously CPU-intensive?
2. Convert/Export of any visible camera directly from Timeline view
   1. Unless I'm missing something, when I see something I want to export, I need to switch to Clips view to export, and because of the way my cameras are set up, I almost always want to export the same timespan from 2-4 cameras, which I then edit/assemble in various ways as the critters move around my yard.
   2. This can be very cumbersome if I'm reviewing footage that's more than a day old, because switching from Timeline to Clips always brings me back to now, and then I have to remember when my video of interest was.
   3. Due to the arrangement of the cameras and my regions of interest, some of the cameras do not trigger when the animals are on-screen, either because they're too small, or because I've masked out certain areas to prevent triggering on wind movement of branches, so I can't even look for alerts. I need to look at New clips and then scrub around to find the time of interest.
      1. I don't want to set up Group Triggering for all the cameras in a set, because sometimes I want to see when each individual camera was triggered, and having all the triggers for a group shown on the group Timeline eliminated the need for group triggering, at least for me.
3. A super bonus feature would be simultaneous Convert/Export of multiple streams from Timeline view.
   1. Dragging start/stop shows the relevant frames of all the cameras on the screen
   2. Show a checkbox for each camera on the screen so we can select to export from some or all of the cameras

These features would improve my daily efficiency even more, although I have no idea how difficult any of these would be.