Am I doing this right? (Continuous Recording)

[diver165]

OK, I decided to go continuous after getting frustrated with recordings being stopped or missing this with motion detection. I've got a decent size Blue Iris system with 21 Cams all 4mp and above except for 2 of them. All are set to continuous sub + trigger. I do use sub streams and capture audio. I'm recording in 2hr blocks just because files get huge.

My system has 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12400 2.50 GHz, with 32.0 GB RAM, 512gig SSD system drive and a WD Purple 12TB HD running windows 11 Home. This PC does nothing but Blue Iris. I was running Code Project AI but kept having issues with it and since I'm recording continuously I didn't see the point.

I've been recording this way for a week. My storage HD (12TB) is not even close to being 1/4 full. I thought I did the math right and figured it would fill up in about 10-14 days. Am I missing something or should I have something set differently? My CPU usage under BI is like 2-12% with a baseline system usage of about 20%. Maybe I was thinking recording continuously would be more system intensive than this. And I start to 2nd guess myself and maybe I don't have it setup quite right.

 

[wittaj]

That seems right. Substreams take up a lot less storage, which makes them perfect for 24/7 recording. And yes the act of simply saving 24/7 isn't as much of a CPU load as you think it would be.

 

[Ri22o]

It also depends on how many triggers you get. Most of mine are set to Cont Sub + Trigger during the day, but my rear cameras were basically set to continuous when I had workers building my deck due to the constant motion. After they were done, it's back to "normal."

One thing to experiment with, if you have the storage space, is to set some to Cont Sub + Trigger during the day but change profiles to Cont at night. I did this with some of my more critical FOVs so that I wouldn't miss anything in the dark.

 

[bubaseballfan]

I had a question in the same vein as the original question. My setup is nearly identical to the original poster's -- I have a PC dedicated to BI. Running 10 cams. I'm utilizing sub streams, 15 FPS CBR, Iframe interval 15. Recording in 1 hour blocks. Overall, I followed the recommended forum setups.

Similar to Diver165's predicament, I'm currently using Continuous Sub + Trigger, but am considering moving a few high priority cameras to continuous because my motion detection is not quite perfect (yet).

I noticed that the "Record dual streams if available" is checked, but also greyed out. Right now my CPU usage is 8%.

My question is: If I switched all the cams to continuous, in theory, should my CPU usage stay pretty much the same? After all, it's recording both streams already anyway, right? The only thing that would change would be my video block file size will obviously be much larger and thus my hard drive would not be able to hold as many days of footage.

I'm probably going to try it out anyway, but I wanted a better understanding of how Blue Iris works, specifically on how it's recording two streams at once at any given "live" moment.

Thanks to all on this forum for the great info.

 

[wittaj]

It will go up a tad, but for most not enough to be an issue provided you still let BI use substreams. If you disable substreams the CPU will sky rocket.

 

[Flintstone61]

 

[Ri22o]

I noticed that the "Record dual streams if available" is checked, but also greyed out. Right now my CPU usage is 8%.

I have some cameras with this checked and others that don't have it checked, but no clue why. Does anyone have an opinion on which is the best method?

I think if you want it unchecked you will need to uncheck it in the non-primary profile.

 

[diver165]

My question is: If I switched all the cams to continuous, in theory, should my CPU usage stay pretty much the same?

My CPU usage went down actually. I was running 12-18% CPU and now I run 2-3%. It will jump up if I have a bunch of triggered cams but it never goes above 25%. I run 22 cams on an I-5 w/ 32 gig ram and 12tb hd