Blueiris update to 5 purpose

Dorsey Pender

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What was the main reason for the overhaul of 4 to 5? The UI3 is different. Was there a programming language change?
 

fenderman

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What was the main reason for the overhaul of 4 to 5? The UI3 is different. Was there a programming language change?
W H AT ’ S N E W
With hundreds of updates, so much has changed since version 4 was first released in
December 2014. But 4.5 years later, it’s time to take Blue Iris to the next level with this
major upgrade to version 5. Here’s what you can expect to find:
UI refresh
Every element was redesigned and re-rendered for a consistent, high-contrast, high-
resolution and modern aesthetic. Buttons and other tools have been more intuitively
grouped and sized. A new font has been selected for improved antialiasing and readability.
Help documentation refresh
It’s been awhile! The Help may now be read in book format as well as in-context via Adobe
Acrobat bookmarks throughout the UI. Major topics previously neglected have been re-
written to reflect all that has been added to this software over the years.
High DPI display awareness
Windows and UI elements will be scaled automatically to match your Windows Display
control panel selections. UI elements were designed to look sharp at up to 300 DPI. No
more tiny icons on 4K monitors and beyond.
Remote management
This is perhaps the most significant upgrade in terms of software power and flexibility—you
may now use one Blue Iris installation to manage many others simultaneously.
PAG E ? 6
When connected to one or more remote systems via the new remote management control
panel, you get a concise view of each system’s status. You may then make any remote Blue
Iris server ‘active’ in the UI, giving you complete virtual control of that remote Blue Iris
installation without the hassle or many shortcomings of an otherwise “remote desktop”
solution. BVR clips are opened using progressive download management so that only the
portions of the file of interest are transferred. Status pages, the timeline and clips lists are
refreshed as they are updated on the server. Sounds are played and popups may be
displayed locally from all remote connected systems. Configuration changes are made
seamlessly by uploading any edits.
Alert action set lists
Every possible action that’s supported by Blue Iris may now be applied to camera alerts as
well as many other conditions such as user account login, status messages, digital input
signals, and more. You may create a list of these actions to be executed in any order or
combination. Each action has an associated profile selector to allow you to manage actions
for all profiles together on one page.
PAG E ? 7
New alert action types
There are also new action types. These include toaster pop-up messages in the lower-right
corner of the Windows display, FTP transfers, and simply the ability to wait an arbitrary
time between consecutive actions. You now may specify the devices and text for push
notifications. Support for legacy Android GCM push notifications was added.
Clip management updates
In addition to its own UI refresh, the timeline view receives a couple of other interesting
updates—the ability to zoom in further and have alert images displayed directly on the clip
tracks.
The clip view list may be “unfolded” to fill the display with clip images. Days are delimited
by a solid color bar.
Viewer playback controls
In place of generic play/pause/stop buttons, a more interactive speed control has been
designed and implemented. For BVR content, you may now slide the speed control left to
slow down or reverse, or right to speed up and go forward. Click the horizontal control
anywhere to set the speed directly, or slide and release to return to the previous setting.
Camera configuration synchronization
On several camera settings pages you will find the option to synchronize that page with
another camera’s settings. This allows you to make changes to one camera’s settings and
have that affect one or more other cameras’ behavior. This will come in handy if you find
yourself setting (and then having to later adjust) the same alerts or other settings across
multiple cameras.
PAG E ? 8
Global volume control
You may now use the mute and volume controls to adjust the live volume on all cameras
simultaneously. For mixing levels, use the gain control found on each camera’s audio
settings page. The same mute and volume control is used by the clip viewer window as
well.
Technology
The time is right with a major software upgrade to also update development and runtime
environments. The latest Microsoft technologies, video processing and runtime libraries are
now used and redistributed. While we lose support for the oldest operating systems (dating
back to 2001!) we gain support for many emergent technologies which will be further
leveraged in the 5.x series.
As we are all interested in getting the most out of our CPU clock cycles, these newer
development tools combined with new code optimizations will combine to contribute to a
more efficiently running system. Work will continue with Intel and Nvidia to further
leverage graphics hardware assistance.
And that’s not all!
Unlike other software which is released just once, or which sees an update only every one or
two years, this is just the beginning for Blue Iris 5. As with versions past, improvement and
innovation will continue over the coming years. The client apps for iOS and Android, as
well as the UI3 browser interface all will receive major updates as well.
Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming the major focus for all video security software, and
this includes Blue Iris 5. In conjunction with Sentry Smart Alerts, a solution is already in
place to reduce false triggers when human recognition is ideal. These options will be
expanded to also include free services as well as LPR and facial recognition technologies.
Please keep the suggestions coming, and we thank you for your continued support of Blue
Iris.

U P DAT E N OT E S
As major changes are made to version 5, they will be documented in this section.
5.0.1 - August 1, 2019
After a couple of months spent focusing solely on bug fixes and minor usability
enhancements, we have reached a point of stability that now allows us to continue with
more significant development.
The console now recognizes when the service has crashed and has been restarted. An
automatic reconnection is attempted for seamless use of the console window.
The latest version of the Intel MFX library (2019R1) is now being used. This update was
made in an attempt to bring stability to systems experiencing memory leaks with some
versions of the Intel drivers, and to possibly offer H.265 decoding and (eventually) hardware
encoding using Intel QuickSync.
5.0.2 - August 12, 2019
Blue Iris now honors the Windows preference to move the cursor to the default button
(usually OK) on pop-up message dialogs.
The code to create and alert images has been moved to its own thread—this makes the video
capture thread more efficient and allows for alert image post-processing. Also, the trigger/
alerts thread has been re-written to work most effectively with Sentry Smart Alerts.
Sentry Smart Alert configuration has been moved to a new page “Artificial Intelligence” from
the Trigger tab in camera settings. ALPR support using Plate Recognizer has been added to
this page as well. Sentry works to filter false-alarms via person-detection. ALPR works by
analyzing the alert image—if a license tag is found, the number is added to the database and
visible on the alerts list.
 
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