How to view main stream clips from UI3?

Spooling

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Hey there;

I noticed that when I'm viewing recorded clips/alerts on the UI3 or the IOS interface, the video which is shown is from the substream. Is there a way to have it show the main stream, or at least show it when it's needed. (ie. when zoomed in etc.)

My live video feeds through UI3 show the main streams, just not the clips.

In the main BI interface I can see the main streams as well, so it appears it only behaves this way through the UI3 interface and my IOS app as well.

Thanks
 

bp2008

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I can't speak for the IOS app, but I sent Blue Iris support a bug report this morning about how UI3 gets stuck receiving the sub stream when it should be receiving the main stream.

I'd expect this to be fixed by the next Blue Iris update. Alternatively you could use Blue Iris' update menu to roll back to the latest stable, 5.3.8.17, which should not have this bug.
 

Spooling

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Thank you bp2008! I was playing with the latest some more and noticed that sometimes it opens the main stream but more often than not, it opens the sub stream. That explains why my other BI server running the latest stable version doesn't have this issue.
 

bp2008

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The way it breaks is, once UI3 requests any sub stream imagery from the clip, Blue Iris gets stuck providing ONLY sub stream imagery from that clip. It resets when imagery is requested from a different clip.

So if you mouse over a clip and the preview animation begins, that comes from the sub stream due to being thumbnail sized. Then even before you click on the clip to open it fully, Blue Iris is already locked into using the sub stream.

If you very quickly mouse onto a clip tile and click really fast before the animation starts, you can get the main stream to load. Or you can use keyboard arrow keys (up and down) to navigate between clips without using the mouse at all, thereby avoiding the sub stream being used for the preview animation. Or you could turn off the clip preview animation in UI Settings, but then you might forget to turn it back on after the bug is fixed.

Seeking/scrubbing within the clip will also use the sub stream by default, which will break the main stream.
 

Spooling

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I was just having another look in regards to the iOS app. When you view a live camera stream it shows the sub stream, however if you view a recorded clip it shows the main stream.
 

erkme73

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It looks like this was fixed with today's release. I can now view main stream on all clips. However, all my alert clips start at the beginning of the main clip. Thumbnails are correct, but when clicked, they just go to the beginning of the entire clip. Gonna rebuild database. Maybe that'll solve it. Asking here to see if anyone else had this issue.
 

bp2008

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I'm seeing the same bug @erkme73. It is inconsistent, not always starting at the beginning but not always starting at the correct spot either. Broken behavior only occurs if requested stream resolution is higher than sub stream resolution.

You should report that to Ken so he can fix it. I would but its bedtime.
 

erkme73

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Glad to hear I'm not the only one. I just fired off an email to Ken with your comment about stream resolution included. Thx.
 

erkme73

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@bp2008 - Ken wrote back almost immediately acknowledging that you two had discussed it. Two updates have been issued since then, and while the problem seems to have improved a bit, I still have to click on an alert thumbnail multiple times until it finally respects the timecode an begins replay at the proper location.

Any idea if this bug is gonna hang around for a lot longer? It's not a huge issue, but it does make replaying alerts of interest a bit frustrating.

My brother has a similar setup as mine, and he's been asking me if I've noticed the playback issue. I told him it was growing pains, as the sub-stream implementation isn't fully mature yet...
 

bp2008

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@bp2008 - Ken wrote back almost immediately acknowledging that you two had discussed it. Two updates have been issued since then, and while the problem seems to have improved a bit, I still have to click on an alert thumbnail multiple times until it finally respects the timecode an begins replay at the proper location.
I don't recall emailing Ken about that specific problem.

I agree, it is still broken. Probably related to the mouseover preview because it requests low resolution jpeg frames at various timestamps. I think if you turn off the mouseover thumbs (right-click on a clip to see this option) then your alerts will always begin at the right time? That would be an important detail to share with Ken to help him reproduce the issue.

Any idea if this bug is gonna hang around for a lot longer? It's not a huge issue, but it does make replaying alerts of interest a bit frustrating.

My brother has a similar setup as mine, and he's been asking me if I've noticed the playback issue. I told him it was growing pains, as the sub-stream implementation isn't fully mature yet...
I don't know. Like I said, I don't recall discussing the problem with him.
 

bp2008

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Based on past experience, if I don't keep pestering Ken about problems, they don't get fixed. Case in point, even today when you maximize single cameras that have sub streams, they often display a frame or two from a previous main stream decoding session. I reported this to him last year but Ken kind of indicated that he was having trouble with it and I let the issue drop, and here we are many months later and the issue is still there.
 

erkme73

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Interesting. Maybe he was thinking of another issue. Screenshot to prove I'm not going nuts....

Screenshot_20210302-235918.png

I'll turn off previews tomorrow and will let you know. Gotta get some z's now.
 

erkme73

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@bp2008 - man, I feel really bad for not getting back on this. I just tested it, and with the preview animations turned off, it instantly snaps to the correct timecode in the clip for a given alert thumbnail. Every single time too. I sent a followup email to Ken to confirm that this bug has something to do with the preview animations.

On an (unrelated) aside - I just noticed today that when I view the "all cameras" composite image in UI3, my CPU jumps from about 10% to 40%. If I open any smaller group, or individual cameras, the CPU drops down to low teens.

Interestingly, if I have the BI console open viewing all the cameras, the CPU stays down around 10%.

I turned on "limit decoding unless required" on every camera, so I assume pulling up the UI3 composite of all cameras is activating all of them. Is there a way to make that composite image behave more like the one on the console, where it doesn't cause all the cameras to decode all frames?
 

bp2008

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I turned on "limit decoding unless required" on every camera, so I assume pulling up the UI3 composite of all cameras is activating all of them. Is there a way to make that composite image behave more like the one on the console, where it doesn't cause all the cameras to decode all frames?
Yes.



"Require/decode all camera frames when streaming" should be unchecked.

Also make sure that Blue Iris Settings > Other > Scaling is set to Fast.
 

erkme73

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Yes.



"Require/decode all camera frames when streaming" should be unchecked.

Also make sure that Blue Iris Settings > Other > Scaling is set to Fast.
Everytime I think I'm getting the hang of tweaking things, I'm made painfully aware of how green I am. Thank you! That solved my high cpu when using ui3 AND the bi app when looking at all cameras!
 
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