BI Choppy issues.

[MCS Tech]

Yes, I am new to BI.... But I have been reading these threads for about 8 months and I finally jumped in, but disappointed a bit.

I bought 4 cams about 8 months ago, they are 4-5MP. Uniview cams, along with the new UNIVIEW (8) NVR.
The Uniview NVR is fine although "Motion" is just motion, trees, shadows, etc - lots of false alerts even when I try and tweak things, I just wanna know about people and cars really.

So I bought a referb PC from Amazon (I have a month or so to return) The PC is a Lenovo Desktop Thinkcenter M92P - Its an Intel Core i7, 3.8Ghz, and 16gig Ram.

Then I bought a POE switch as my NVR had built in POE, and downloaded BI - Licensed BI - And have been playing with it for about 3 days.

1) the video is choppy - and not smooth at all almost like 1 frame a second even though I have watched a dozen tutorials (Direct to disc, etc) even if I save a recording then play it in VLC still choppy.
2) One cam is in an ally and I know cars drive by daily dozens of times daily but BI seems to miss these things.

My CPU usage (4 cams) is less than 20%, and memory is low also - I Guess im very use to smooth almost live looking video and this currently is just not it.

I really liked the NVR but the IOS interface wasn't good and the trees, shadows, etc - just not smart enough - I really wanted to get a BI and deepstack running but I haven't even added DS yet and when BI is now missing events already - IDK - Sometimes cars speed at like 20MPH through this 5MPH ally and BI misses them entirely.

Any help would be greatly appreciated - I could even cashapp for some remote assistance.

TIA

 

[wittaj]

At quick glance it appears you might have cameras that are problematic with BI.

Drop the FPS to 15 FPS - anything over that is overkill and can be taxing the camera CPU or other components in your system. Movies are shot at 24FPS and we are not making Hollywood movies.

I do not see unless it is on another screen somewhere where to set the frame rates (or iframes). That 0.07 you circled is the KEY and that should be 1.00 and is simply FPS divided by iframes FPS/Iframe. Those two numbers should match. So 15 FPS and 15 Iframes is 15/15= 1.00 which is the KEY.

BI works best when the KEY is 1.00, but is problematic once it drops below 0.5. If the camera does not let you set iframes, it will be a problematic camera in BI.

With yours at 0.07, that means that anything that is in and out of your field of view in under 14 seconds could be missed entirely as a motion trigger. Hence the speeding car being missed.

Are your cameras going thru the router or are they completely isolated from the internet via dual NIC or VLAN?

 

[MCS Tech]

Thanks for the quick reply - Just did a quick Google search and the processor in that re-newed Lenovo may be an older processor also, wondering if that could be the reason as well.
These are Uniview Cams - 5MP Starlight IO cams that can do 25 FPS and did do that easily with the NVR.

2 of the Cams are going into a POE switch that switch is also hooked to the router and my BI Computer.
The Other 2 cams are on my garage - they go to a seperate POE switch, that Switch goes to a router that is part of a wireless mesh system that then talks to the other MESH pucks (Google) then BI sees those cams directly via IP.

Ill drop down the FR now and run some testing.....

 

[wittaj]

So a couple of issues.

It appears that is a 3rd gen CPU, which if using the substreams should be capable, but maybe the CPU inside is designed to favor less power over performance, which is common in the tiny tower category.

Cameras will generally perform better within the NVR (provided they are the same brand) because the manufacturer has probably optimized both to work efficiently. But for many the quality is the same whether it is the NVR or BI. So many factors come into play.

Blue Iris is great and works with probably more camera brands than most VMS programs, but there are brands that don't work well or not at all - Rings, Arlos, Nest, Some Zmodo cams use proprietary systems and cannot be used with Blue Iris, and for a lot of people Reolink doesn't work well either.

I do not have any of that brand, so I cannot speak to them, but if you cannot control the iframe rate and the KEY number in BI is below 0.50, it will be problematic and you should not even attempt Deepstack. Further, look at your images above - you set the camera to 25FPS, yet is is coming to BI at 3FPS mainstream and 0.29FPS substream - that will cause you so many problems. Change it to CBR and see if that improves it.

Blue Iris works best when the FPS and the iframes match. Now this is a ratio, so it should be a 1.00 if it matches the FPS. The iframes not matching FPS is why they miss motion in Blue Iris and why people have problems.

The Blue Iris developer has indicated that for best reliability, sub stream frame rate should be equal to the main stream frame rate and these cameras cannot do that and there is nothing you can do about that with these cameras... The iframe rates (something these cameras do not allow you to set) should equal the FPS, but at worse case be no more than double. This example shows the cameras going down to a keyrate of 0.25 means that the iframe rates are over 4 times the FPS and that is why motion detection is a disaster with these cameras and Blue Iris...A value of 0.5 or less is considered insufficient to trust for motion triggers reliably...we have seen people come here where their system missed them pulling their car into their garage, so it would probably miss your speedster in the alley.

A key of 0.25 means that if the object can be in and off of your camera view in under 4 seconds, it will miss the motion. Folks have seen the key drop to 0.10 with these cams, which means if an object is not on your screen for longer than 10 seconds, it will miss the motion. Yours is even lower.

Compounding the matter even worse...motion detection is based on the substream and look at the substream FPS - they dropped down to below .3 FPS with an iframe/key rate of 0.07 - you will miss motion most of the time with that issue...DeepStack probably won't work at all...

If your cameras are routed thru the wifi router, that can be problematic. Wifi routers are notorious for not being able to keep up with the demands of these cameras. Unlike streaming services like Netflix, these cameras do not buffer, so one lost packet and it has to start over. Especially if you are maxing out the camera. Unplug internet while watching Netflix and it will probably continue for 45 seconds. Do it with this camera and the feed stops instantly. It is best to not have the cameras go thru a router.

And then finally the camera themselves can be problematic. Keep in mind that these type of cameras, although are spec'd and capable of these various parameters, real world testing by many of us shows if you try to run these units at higher FPS and higher bitrates than needed that you will max out the CPU in the unit and then it bugs out just long enough that you miss something or video is choppy or pixelated or you get lost signals. My car is rated for 6,000RPM redline, but I am not gonna run it in 3rd gear on the highway at 6,000RPM...same with these types of units - gotta keep them under rated capacity. Some may do better than others, but trying to use the rated "spec" of every option available is usually not going to work well, either with a car or a camera or NVR.

Look at all the threads where people came here with a jitter in the video or video dropping signal or IVS missing motion or the SD card doesn't overwrite and they were running 30FPS and when people tell them to drop the FPS and they dropped the FPS to 15FPS the camera became stable and they could actual freeze frame the image to get a clean capture. The goal of these cameras are to capture a perp, not capture smooth motion. When we see the news, are they showing the video or a freeze frame screen shot? Nobody cares if it isn't butter smooth...getting the features to make an ID is the important factor. As always, YMMV...

Further, these types of cameras are not GoPro or Hollywood type cameras that offer slow-mo capabilities and other features. They "offer" 30FPS and 60FPS to appease the general public that thinks that is what they need, but you will not find many of us here running more than 15 FPS; and movies are shot at 24 FPS, so anything above that is a waste of storage space for what these cameras are used for. If 24 FPS works for the big screen, I think 15 FPS is more than enough for phones and tablets and most monitors LOL. Many of my cameras are running at 12FPS.

In fact, many times if a CPU is maxing out, if it doesn't drop signal, then it will adhere to the FPS but then slow the shutter down to try to not max the CPU, which then produces a smooth blurry image..that is the video my neighbor gets who insists on running 60FPS. He gets smooth walking people but you can't freeze frame it cause every frame is a blur, meanwhile my 12FPS gets the clean freeze frame. Shutter speed is more important the FPS. We both run the same shutter speed by the way, but his camera CPU is maxing out and something gotta give when you push it that hard.