Clips and Archiving: desperate plea for help.

[Steve.L]

I’m struggling mightily and need this topic dumbed way down, like with step-by-step pics in a tutorial or something. Perhaps screens of someone else’s folder structure would help.

Of all the places I figured I’d run into trouble with BI, folder structure and archiving clips never even entered my mind, but it’s where I’m having the MOST trouble. Shockingly, most of my new BI experience has been like plug-and-play, but my archiving is completely out of whack, and it’s causing significant instability in the system.

I am flat-out not grasping anything on pages 90-93 of the BI Help file (Clip Folders). In a general sense, it seems logical, but I can’t make it work in the menus. Just take a gander at my screengrabs and you’ll see what a desperate state of affairs I’m in.

The first thing plaguing me from the get-go, and still, is this error, and sadly, I don't even understand exactly what it means:


Then I fought and clicked around for so long that I somehow finally created a folder (Steve Stored) on the D-drive and was able to get at least some of the clips moving over to there…but not all of them (and I suspect it's wrong anyway). Frustratingly, many clips seem to be archiving (storing) right on the C-drive, and I can’t seem to remedy it.

You can see in the overallocation images that my current arrangement is whacked. And although I know it’s wrong, I’ve been limping along by manually moving clips to my “Steve Stored” folder on D, but BI seems to keep pulling them out and sticking them back on C. Am I imagining this?

I suspect the remedy to this fiasco is quite simple, and you guys may even be having a laugh over it, but damn, I think it’s starting to threaten my manhood.

 

[sebastiantombs]

First things first.

Blue Iris needs the New, Alerts and Stored directories named exactly that way. The "Aux" directories can be renamed but only in the control panel screen for BI where you allocate space for them. Just right click and rename. Read the Help file, this is all covered there.

Do not write anything to the C drive other than the database, and that needs to be where BI puts it. Not where you think you want it.

The simplest thing to do is to create a Blue Iris directory on you D: drive and under that duplicate the standard BI directory structure of New, Alerts, Stored and as many AUX as you think you may need. If you need more Aux add them to the drive, then allocated and rename them from BI.

Remember that an 8TB drive, for example, does not format out to 8TB. More like 7.5TB. While mentioning formatting when formatting the drive set the block size to 1024. That will reduce head cycles compared to the stock Windows size.

Blue Iris needs some overhead to be able to write files before deleting the older ones. Do not allocate the entire drive. Leave 10% unused just for that overhead. Remember that each directory has a limit and they all total up when allocation multiple directories to a drive.

Do not set an "age" for file deletion. Set it by size only. BI has excellent management of the database and will easily handle things based on size alone. Moving things from one directory to another is a waste of cycles for the CPU, even if they're on the same drive. Don't bother moving things from New to Stored. It's pointless. Let size determine when files are deleted.

 

[SouthernYankee]

The New folder should be on the D drive and the size should be at least 500GB. C:\BlueIris\New . The DB and alert folders should be on the CD if the C drive is an SSD.

Use the correct folder names for your folders, do not change the names, just the drive letters.
c:\BlueIris\db
D:\BlueIris\New
D:\BlueIris\Stored
c:\BlueIris\Alerts

====================================
My Standard allocation post.

1) Do not use time (limit clip age)to determine when BI video files are moved or deleted, only use space. Using time wastes disk space.
2) If New and stored are on the same disk drive do not used stored, set the stored size to zero, set the new folder to delete, not move. All it does is waste CPU time and increase the number of disk writes. You can leave the stored folder on the drive just do not use it.
3) Never allocate over 90% of the total disk drive to BI.
4) if using continuous recording on the BI camera settings, record tab, set the combine and cut video to 1 hour or 3 GB. Really big files are difficult to transfer.
5) it is recommend to NOT store video on an SSD (the C: drive).
6) Do not run the disk defragmenter on the video storage disk drives.
7) Do not run virus scanners on BI folders
8) an alternate way to allocate space on multiple drives is to assign different cameras to different drives, so there is no file movement between new and stored.
9) Never use an External USB drive for the NEW folder. Never use a network drive for the NEW folder.
10) for performance do not put more than about 10,000 files in a folder, the search and adding files will eat CPU and disk performance. Look at using a sub folder per camera (see &CAM in bi help)


Advanced storage:
If you are using a complete disk for large video file storage (BVR) continuous recording, I recommend formatting the disk, with a windows cluster size of 1024K (1 Megabyte). This is a increase from the 4K default. This will reduce the physical number of disk write, decrease the disk fragmentation, speed up access.
Hint:
On the Blue iris status (lighting bolt graph) clip storage tab, if there is any red on the bars you have a allocation problem. If there is no Green, you have no free space, this is bad.
======================================

 

[Steve.L]

Thanks guys. Yes, I've read the Help file ad nauseum, but it's seemingly minimal info with no example images and I'm just not grasping it. But I will continue.

Southern Yankee, yes, I've seen your allocation post in several threads and take it to heart. I will continue to try and put it to work.

 

[Steve.L]

I'm updating this thread for posterity, and because I'm a firm believer in reporting back the final result(s) or outcome of the issues. I know from experience in the automotive forums, how teeth-gnashingly frustrating it is to run a search for a topic, or be following a topic, and then the OP just vanishes into thin air and never closes out the thread or reports findings/results.

I named this thread as such in the event that some newb comes along with Clips and Archiving nightmares, like I had, and does a search here for that term, he/she might find some useful info herein. After 7 weeks of frustration (I know, can you believe it??), I've finally got my sh*t dialed in, and the result is posted in another thread started by @bslow47, here. @SouthernYankee was kind enough to post screenshots of his dialog boxes and status bar to complement his "standard allocation post," and it works wonders. So, if you need to "see" how the folder structure should look, and what the Settings should look like on the Clips and Archiving tab, again, go here.