Blue Iris and Plex on the Same server

bhunter

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I am on the verge of building a blue iris server. I want to use the server for Plex also. I have the processor picked out. Xeon 1246v3. I am in the process of installing security cam's (IP 1080p Hikvision). So now I have a need for a NVR/DVR. I was looking to see if others have had experiences with having Plex and blue Iris on the same server.


Plex side- max of 4 HD streams at one time


Blue Iris- 4-6 1080p IP cams doing motion based recording.


Thoughts


Thanks
Bill
 

Larebear

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I run Plex and Blue Iris on my main PC along with quite a few other programs open at the same time. I haven't run into any problems. It's a i7-3770 system and isn't dedicated to BI or Plex. I monitor 18 cameras 24/7 in BI with another 14 configured but disabled most of the time. I use Plex to stream to a 50" TV and a couple of Android tablets and phone. Works great. :)
 

bhunter

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I run Plex and Blue Iris on my main PC along with quite a few other programs open at the same time. I haven't run into any problems. It's a i7-3770 system and isn't dedicated to BI or Plex. I monitor 18 cameras 24/7 in BI with another 14 configured but disabled most of the time. I use Plex to stream to a 50" TV and a couple of Android tablets and phone. Works great. :)
Are you recording 1080p cam's?

Is your plex server HD or SD.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences.
Bill
 

code2

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Are you recording 1080p cam's?

Is your plex server HD or SD.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences.
Bill
I can chime in Plex runs at what ever Definition the movie is.You do have control on the streaming part of it as far as how much is used in terms of bandwidth. plex really doesn't effect a system unless you are remotely watching video then it has to transcode which is where the CPU starts to work. For the most part its just streaming locally for him directly so no transcoding is happening.

I run my flex server on the same computer I run my cameras which run at 1080 and one 720p. I am switching to blue iris so I sought out some recommendations from a member here on a puter for that task.
 

bp2008

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I bet that system will work. The only issue I can think of is that Plex might make the CPU usage hit 100% while transcoding video on-the-fly for remote viewing, and that might starve Blue Iris and make it unstable. Maybe you can somehow make the plex process(es) use below normal priority? Or maybe it won't matter and everything will run smoothly regardless. I don't tend to run other things on my Blue Iris server...
 

Larebear

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Are you recording 1080p cam's?

Is your plex server HD or SD.

Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences.
Bill
Nine of the cameras that I monitor 24/7 record at 1080p.

I use PLEX to play both HD and SD content. I've also sent HD clips from BI to PLEX so that I can play back the motion recorded videos on the 50" TV. Those of course are exported to MP4 format.
 

Larebear

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The only issue I can think of is that Plex might make the CPU usage hit 100% while transcoding video on-the-fly for remote viewing
So far I haven't had any problems with having BI running and streaming video through PLEX. I haven't checked the CPU usage with both working. I might check that tonight while watching a video through PLEX.
 

code2

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I bet that system will work. The only issue I can think of is that Plex might make the CPU usage hit 100% while transcoding video on-the-fly for remote viewing, and that might starve Blue Iris and make it unstable. Maybe you can somehow make the plex process(es) use below normal priority? Or maybe it won't matter and everything will run smoothly regardless. I don't tend to run other things on my Blue Iris server...

Naw BI with cause the cpu to hit 100 before plex ever will even with transcoding. But i am with you nothing should be running on a camera computer to many what ifs. I run plea from a old mac mini now which is some where in the house since its been that long since i have seen it. every done with it is remotely
 

bhunter

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Thank you to everyone for sharing your knowledge and experiences. So I am in the process (as you can tell) trying to perfect my setup. I have 2 issues: 1 being money (like it is to everyone). I currently have an esxi setup. It is an Intel Xeon X3440 2.53 quad core. It is currently hosting a plex server, unraid server, sagetv and homeseer server. I am wanting to upgrade my plex server to a physical machine that can handle trancoding 4 simultaneous HD streams. So here is my thought, I would like to get some feed back to see if this might work:
1. Move the plex server to new hardware.
2. I will have a max of 6 3 mega pixel cameras recording simultaneously. I am buying Hikvision cameras with an external alarm input/output to use an external PIR. My thinking is this will off load some cpu processing.
3. The only vm that uses any type of cpu is the sagetv dvr.
4. Create a Windows 7 pro 64 bit vm on my current ESXI server for use as a blur iris server. Buy a 4tb purple disk and utilize RDM in order to enable "direct to disk" based recording. (Do you think this server can handle the cpu requirements for my setup?)


Thanks for your inout in helping me perfect this setup!

Bill
 

Larebear

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Naw BI with cause the cpu to hit 100 before plex ever will even with transcoding. But i am with you nothing should be running on a camera computer to many what ifs. I run plea from a old mac mini now which is some where in the house since its been that long since i have seen it. every done with it is remotely
Last night I was playing my favorite game Far Cry 4 (only game I play). I forgot to shut down the PLEX server and BI before starting the game. I didn't realize it until after I exited the game. It was surprising that BI & PLEX didn't seem to affect the game at all. There was no lag, freezes or lockups and all of the BI motion recordings were fine. I use my main PC for everything. :)
 

bp2008

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Most games only use one or two CPU cores, so their impact on the rest of the system is limited! :)
 

razorseal

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Most games only use one or two CPU cores, so their impact on the rest of the system is limited! :)

Are these computers smart enough to dedicate 1 core per software though? lol

I thought about making a plex server as well. But honestly, we just use netflix and other video stream companies, so we would almost never use plex, which is why I haven't really even attempted it... lol

with all the cameras, my setup right now (xeon 1225v3) hovers around 30-40% memory. if all my cameras start recording, I'm at 50% (6 cameras. 4 1080, 1 480, 1 720)

I really don't think plex would take the other 50% lol (and I never record all at once. they're all on motion)
 

code2

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Thank you to everyone for sharing your knowledge and experiences. So I am in the process (as you can tell) trying to perfect my setup. I have 2 issues: 1 being money (like it is to everyone). I currently have an esxi setup. It is an Intel Xeon X3440 2.53 quad core. It is currently hosting a plex server, unraid server, sagetv and homeseer server. I am wanting to upgrade my plex server to a physical machine that can handle trancoding 4 simultaneous HD streams. So here is my thought, I would like to get some feed back to see if this might work:
1. Move the plex server to new hardware.
2. I will have a max of 6 3 mega pixel cameras recording simultaneously. I am buying Hikvision cameras with an external alarm input/output to use an external PIR. My thinking is this will off load some cpu processing.
3. The only vm that uses any type of cpu is the sagetv dvr.
4. Create a Windows 7 pro 64 bit vm on my current ESXI server for use as a blur iris server. Buy a 4tb purple disk and utilize RDM in order to enable "direct to disk" based recording. (Do you think this server can handle the cpu requirements for my setup?)


Thanks for your inout in helping me perfect this setup!

Bill

The best plex server is simply going on Craigslist and search for Mac mini. the oldest mac mini can be had for 50 or 100 bucks and can handle plex easy. your network on the other hand I can't speak for cause plex when viewing remotely can tax the network pretty good
 

razorseal

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Just curious why someone would want 4 simultaneous transcoding done? like 4 people watching a show at the same time? Can you access plex from the outside? like watch something from your phone, or laptop while at a hotel?

I'm new to this media server stuff so...

and lastly, you guys must have some serious library of videos for this stuff lol
 

Larebear

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Most games only use one or two CPU cores, so their impact on the rest of the system is limited! :)
Now you have me curious bp.:) Next time I play the game, I'll have to check my CPU usage. Far Cry 4 is a huge game. Takes up about 33 GB's on my SSD. I had to upgrade my video card to a GTX 750 Ti. The game wouldn't run on my old GTS 250. The game is very graphic intensive, so it will be interesting to find out how much it loads the processor and memory.

When I played the game a couple nights ago, BI and my PLEX server were running at the same time as I mentioned before, along with several other programs such as Kaspersky, TeamViewer, DropBox, Malwarebytes, SAS, Skype and a few more.
 

Larebear

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I checked CPU and memory usage while streaming a 1080p video through PLEX Media Server to a 50" TV in the other room. Also had Blue Iris open monitoring 18 cameras and was playing the Far Cry 4 game all at the same time. :) CPU usage was varying between approx 40% to 80%.

Here's a screen capture showing the results.

 

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code2

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Just curious why someone would want 4 simultaneous transcoding done? like 4 people watching a show at the same time? Can you access plex from the outside? like watch something from your phone, or laptop while at a hotel?

I'm new to this media server stuff so...

and lastly, you guys must have some serious library of videos for this stuff lol
Yes you can watch it outside your home in a hotel or any where for that matter. its basically like watching it on tv

my plex library is well over 150,000 movies, tv shows, races etc

Basically click the video and it plays

My house is in chicago and currently I am in Detriot at a days in and this is how plea looks remotely

 

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code2

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This capture is with PLEX and Blue Iris shut down with just the game running. As you stated bp, it looks like the game is mainly running off the first core.

Interesting considering the 1st picture you posted is running 15 less process 120 to be exact while the second post is running 135 so what process did you shut down in the first one
 
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bhunter

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Just curious why someone would want 4 simultaneous transcoding done? like 4 people watching a show at the same time? Can you access plex from the outside? like watch something from your phone, or laptop while at a hotel?

I'm new to this media server stuff so...

and lastly, you guys must have some serious library of videos for this stuff lol
Yes for 4 people watching shows simultaneously. You can watch plex from any tablet/phone anywhere you want.
 
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