Expected FPS for scrubbing video at fastest speed?

[TheQ2]

Hello folks, I'm getting 2-3 FPS during playback of clips at 256X speed while scrubbing through video.

Is this expected to good hardware that isn't pegged out?

I've gone through a bunch of the configuration tips from the forum, but just wondering if I should keep hunting for a change that will get me significantly higher FPS for scrubbing through video.

 

[Mike A.]

Are you talking about when using UI3? I'm not sure how to see the FPS while scrubbing when using the BI console. If the former, mine seems to say up to ~5-8 when scrubbing @ 256X no matter which of multiple computers I use to view (none being all that impressive as far as specs). For the same cam and same clip, scrubbing at 1X it's up to 20 (which is that of the cam).

At a practical level, can you really tell much difference in FPS when running through it that fast?

 

[TheQ2]

I can only see the FPS when viewing in UI3, but the performance feels similar in the BI Console.

I'm hoping for 15 FPS or higher when scrubbing fast through video. That would give me a frame for every 17 seconds. At 2 FPS I'm seeing a frame for every 2 minutes, meaning a car could drive by and I wouldn't catch it.

Interesting to hear you are getting 5-8 FPS at 256x, vs my 2-3 FPS. I had my cameras set to H265 and just switched to H264. Also I just changed the Iframe interval to match the frame rate. These were two suggestions I saw on this forum; hopefully they help. I'll check tomorrow.

I'm also getting the full 30 FPS of the camera when viewing at 1x.

 

[Mike A.]

Yes, I run H264 and match FPS and Iframe for most cams.

Tried one cam where I do not match (30/60) and it runs at ~1-4 FPS. I switched it to match but don't have enough video from that yet to really scrub anything.

But, I think that it may be more related to resolution/data rate. The cam at ~1-4 is 4K. A couple of 5MP Amcrest cams run ~4-7. Several 4MP 5442s that I have are a little faster at ~5-8 (which is what I used to check earlier). Some older 2MP cams seem to run ~7-10. A Wyze V3 cam that runs relatively low data rates hits ~9-12. All of which kind of makes sense I guess given more data to push through at the higher end.

Also longer clips seem to give it more time to get going well. Short clips from a couple of cams recording when triggered never really give it a chance.

 

[TheQ2]

Good news: I just checked again and now getting 15 FPS when going at 256x!

I changed a few settings last night: Cameras now sending H264 at 15fps and Iframe at 15 on main and substream. Was sending H265 at 15 FPS with Iframe at 50 before. By the way this is with 4k cameras.

 

[bp2008]

256x speed playback is basically just rapidly seeking through the video, so anything you can do to make the video easier to decode will make it faster.

Such as:

• Reducing i-frame interval. Seriously if you could have an i-frame interval of 1, so that every frame was an i-frame, it could make 256x playback nearly as fast as 1x playback. But the lower this gets the worse it is for compression, so most cameras don't let you set it lower than the frame rate.
• Lowering resolution
• Reducing frame rate
• Changing H.265 to H.264 to reduce video complexity
• Lowering bit rate
• Possibly using a lower encoding profile (e.g. baseline profile instead of main profile or high profile) -- most cameras don't expose such an option anyway.
• Reducing overall CPU load of the server
• Recording to a faster disk (SSD)
• Using hardware accelerated decoding for clip playback (that is the "Also BVR" checkbox near the hardware acceleration setting in camera properties > Video). This could potentially make it worse though.
• Configure dual streaming (sub stream + main stream) and play from the sub stream when you are playing at 256x