Blue Iris...best practices

[DurandClan]

I have just installed and licensed Blue Iris. So far I like what I see but I have a couple of questions.

I have 4 cameras but will be adding two more. I have one DBPower C754, two Foscam PTZs and a Swann PTZ.

Right now, I'm recording streaming video and I'm basically cutting clips off at 30 minutes to keep them manageable. This is all working well in a virtual machine on a Windows Server that has the virtual disk for the all captured content on one physical drive...a WDC 3TB Purple.

I'd like to keep recording the streaming video but I'm wondering if I can do automatic image capture in addition to the streaming video recording and specify settings. I don't know if my cameras support motion detection or if this is something that is done through Blue Iris or both. Obviously all the streaming video in the world doesn't do any good if I can't get it uploaded fast enough to the cloud in the event the equipment itself is stolen so I would think images would go fairly quick. I have cloud disk space all over the place and I prefer to use that as opposed to using the embedded FTP. My Cox drive software and Box clients are pretty quick to sync data upstream and I have about 40mbps upload speed on my Cox account.

So my questions are this...

1. Can I do image capture and video stream recording simultaneously? (I'm not converting any of the video as of yet...not sure if I need to).
2. Regarding image capture, is it simply setting to a timeframe to capture or is it something that can detect motion with the software?
3. For image capture, what are good settings for the image quality and frequency of capture?

Any help is appreciated as I better familiarize myself with the software and the settings. So far, it appears I have things working fairly well and it does run well on a virtual machine in Hyper-V if anyone else considered this.

DD in Arizona

 

[Q™]

I believe you can clone each camera and set the original camera entry to record 24x7 and the clone to record only when triggered.

Blue Iris dues motion detection very well; for motion detection (within the Blue Iris application) check out the Camera Properties > Trigger tab.

Record your video to a hidden NAS. "Cloud Storage" is a fantasy whose time simply has not come. Another fantasy is that thieves are going to steal your equipment. While this is certainly possible it is -- IMO -- highly unlikely. A hidden NAS will give you the throughput your video needs and will keep you clips safe and secure.

 

[coworkerbob]

Hi @Q2U, I'm curious how you have set up your NAS. Are you synching your recordings from your NAS at off peak hours, or every 30 mins increments? Or your pretty much off loading the recordings to the NAS? I've been thinking of adding one but I don't have any ideas how many days i can keep on a 2bay with 2tb each with 8 Dahua 3mp and 2 1080p cameras recording 24/7 with clones for motion trigger. One week?

 

[Q™]

I don't use a NAS Bob. At the office (i7-3770 with twenty 2MP, 4MP and 5MP cameras) I save Blue Iris video to a 6TB Western Digital Blue drive which is installed in my BI server. At home I save BI video to a 1TB Hitachi USB3 external drive.

The amount of space required to store video is dependent on factors such as bitrate, frame rate, resolution and drive capacity (of course); I'm not at all certain how that works but @bp2008 or @MaxIcon (can't remember which) has a terrific formula for determining such.

I have approximately 4 months of video archived at work on my 6TB WD Blue, but I run most of my work cameras at 4 to 5fps which is a lot less than most folks like to run and I don't use the entire drive capacity for video storage.

 

[Q™]

Here's that formula and some additional information from that indelible TechoWizard, Mr. @MaxIcon...

Here's how much time you can store at 4096 kbps constant recording, fixed bit rate:


4096 kbps (bits) = 512 kBps (bytes)
512 kBps x 60 = 31 MB per minute
31 MBps x 60 = 1.8 GB per hour


So, 500 GB will record 278 hour, or 11.5 days. If you've got your OS on the same HD, use the free space to figure out how much time you can record.


VBR may give more, depending on how complex the scene is and how much motion is seen.

Variable can save bandwidth and recording space when there's little motion and/or simple scenes. If the scenes are detailed or with a lot of motion, it may not make a big difference. Low light images can cause high bit rates with VBR if there's a lot of noise, or if sharpening is set high so that the noise is highlighted more.


Constant will always use the same bit rate, network bandwidth, and recording space, regardless of the scene.


To check performance at different bit rate settings, it's important to check the scene when there's a lot of activity or motion, especially if there's a lot of complexity in the image. Static scenes with little change can look great at lower bit rates but pixelate when there's a lot of motion.

 

[bp2008]

The amount of space required to store video is dependent on factors such as bitrate, frame rate, resolution and drive capacity (of course); I'm not at all certain how that works but @bp2008 or @MaxIcon (can't remember which) has a terrific formula for determining such.

Calculating this is really easy once you understand that it is just simple multiplication and division and understand how units of measure work (this is like elementary school math).

However many cameras you have, add up their bit rates. Example: 4 cameras at 4 Mbps each = 16 Mbps. That is your total bit rate. Lets assume you have 6 TB of space. Then go to google and enter: 6 TB / 16 Mbps and google tells us that 6 TB would hold 34.7222222 days of video if the bit rate was 16 Mbps. You just have to not get the units wrong. TB = terabytes. Mbps = megabits per second. If you screw up and search for "6 TB / 16 MBps" for example you'd get the wrong answer just because you capitalized a B turning megabits into megabytes.

 

[coworkerbob]

Calculating this is really easy once you understand that it is just simple multiplication and division and understand how units of measure work (this is like elementary school math).

However many cameras you have, add up their bit rates. Example: 4 cameras at 4 Mbps each = 16 Mbps. That is your total bit rate. Lets assume you have 6 TB of space. Then go to google and enter: 6 TB / 16 Mbps and google tells us that 6 TB would hold 34.7222222 days of video if the bit rate was 16 Mbps. You just have to not get the units wrong. TB = terabytes. Mbps = megabits per second. If you screw up and search for "6 TB / 16 MBps" for example you'd get the wrong answer just because you capitalized a B turning megabits into megabytes.

Thanks @bp2008 & @Q2U. Thats makes things easier. @bp2008, if you don't mind me asking, are you using a NAS and how do you have that setup? Thanks

 

[bp2008]

I don't record to a NAS directly, though I do have Blue Iris configured to automatically back-up clips via FTP to a single-drive Western Digital MyCloud (which is a NAS). Blue Iris records to an internal hard drive, one of these: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CM85C0K These drives say refurbished, but I've gotten two of them so far and SMART data on both of them tells me they were never powered on until I got them (maybe the seller wiped the SMART data somehow). I do motion recording on 18 cameras and there is not a lot of activity around my house so it is mostly false alarms using 59 GB in the past 45 days.