Intel Quick Sync not working

C

CamMan1000

n3wb
May 20, 2017
3
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I manage BlueIris for 3 different people and none of the 3 seem to have hardware acceleration working. I have "Intel" selected in the main options. But when I select "Default" on the camera's Hardware Accelerated Decode option and click OK, the next time I go to that window, BI has changed it back to "No". This happens on all my Amcrest and Reolink cameras. An old Foscam lets me select "Default" there but even that camera doesn't seem to actually use Quick Sync because the "GPU engine" column in task manager is still blank for the BI process.

PC1:
Intel i5-3570 cpu
BI installed on host as a service. Host also has HyperV installed and a discrete gpu installed.
I tried running BI as not-a-service. Tried plugging a vga monitor into the onboard. Tried upgrading to BI v5. Tried changing the camera's H.264 profile from High to Main to Base, and none of those helped.

PC2:
Intel i7-7700 cpu
BI installed on host as a service. Host has a discrete gpu installed.

PC3:
Xeon E5-2420 v2 cpu
BI installed on host as a service. Host also has HyperV installed.
 
Last edited:
I think you're right about the Xeon not having Quick Sync, but technically it is an Intel CPU. I confirmed that the other two CPUs should have Quick Sync per the Intel website.

Perhaps I should ask specific questions:

1) Does having Hyper-V installed on a host prevent Intel Quick Sync from working on that host?

2) Does having a Discrete GPU installed and my only monitor plugged into it prevent Quick Sync from working (since nothing is "activating" the onboard GPU that has the Quick Sync feature)?

3) If #2 is yes, then if I plug a dummy VGA adapter into an onboard VGA connector to trick Windows into thinking that a monitor is plugged into the onboard GPU, will that enable Quick Sync to work?

4) If I set a camera in BlueIris to "Intel" hardware acceleration, why does BlueIris change it back to "No"?

5) Does BlueIris have a log file somewhere that can give me details about the status of Quick Sync?

6) Can every CPU with Quick Sync support all 3 H.264 profiles: Base, Main, and High? If not, how can I find which profiles my CPU supports?

7) Does running BlueIris as a Windows Service prevent Quick Sync from working?

8) If #7 is yes, then does running BlueIris as a scheduled task that starts On-Startup fix that problem so BlueIris will run before logon and Quick Sync will work?

9) Is there any simple tool I can download that can tell me if Quick Sync is working on my system? This could help me narrow down the problem to BlueIris instead of wondering about my motherboard, Hyper-V, etc.

Thank you!
 
1) No
2) No. Most systems require the integrated graphics (iGPU) to be enabled in the BIOS if you have a discrete GPU. A few also require a display output to be enabled (e.g. #3). Check Windows 10's task manager for Video Decode usage on the Intel graphics adapter to know if Quick Sync is active.
3) Yes
4) If Blue Iris detects that your hardware acceleration choice is preventing the camera from working, it will change it to no for that camera.
5) I don't think so. There's just the main log file but it often doesn't have anything useful in it.
6) I believe so, yes. The only limitation I am aware of is that the oldest Quick Sync implementations (2nd-generation CPUs like i5-2400) max out at 1920x1080 resolution per stream.
7) Only on Windows 7. Should be fine on Windows 8 or 10.
8) I don't know.
9) Task Manager in up-to-date Windows 10 is the easiest way. You can probably get Performance Monitor (built-in to all recent Windows releases) to show the right GPU usage data too but that is complicated.
 
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Wow, thanks a lot for the direct answers! It's amazing that you had all of that knowledge off the top of your head - I spent hours trying to find the answers but it's surprising how little info is available about Quick Sync.

It looks like PC1 still has a problem where the onboard GPU doesn't show up in Task Manager. I made sure that IGPU Multi Monitor was enabled in the BIOS and I believe all drivers are up to date, but Task Manager only shows the PCIE GPU. I know the onboard VGA port was working because I had a monitor plugged into it, so I don't understand yet why that onboard GPU wasn't showing up on the Performance tab. I'll try some more experiments to see if I can get it working. Maybe my motherboard just won't support Quick Sync while a PCIE GPU is installed (ASRock H77M).

I'll post back here if I learn anything more. Thanks again.
 
CamMan1000 said:
Maybe my motherboard just won't support Quick Sync while a PCIE GPU is installed (ASRock H77M).
Click to expand...

I guess that is a possibility. Quick Sync was still a fairly new feature back then so some boards could have had questionable compatibility. You could try temporarily removing the PCIE GPU just to see what changes. If you don't need that GPU you could make the change permanent and save some energy.
 
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No motherboards has an Intel GPU built-in. Those come built-in to the CPU.

How do you know Quick Sync works for you if you don't see it in task manager?
 
bp2008 said:
No motherboards has an Intel GPU built-in. Those come built-in to the CPU.

How do you know Quick Sync works for you if you don't see it in task manager?
Click to expand...

There is a # next to MP of camera meaning quick sync is enabled. Located in Blue Iris Status: Cameras

What would it look like in task manager?

Hardware accelerated decode is Nvidia CUDA
 
Well on the Performance tab (the one with the graphs) one of your GPUs would be labeled Intel and one of its graphs would be "Video Decode" and it would be above 0% on that graph.
 
bp2008 said:
Well on the Performance tab (the one with the graphs) one of your GPUs would be labeled Intel and one of its graphs would be "Video Decode" and it would be above 0% on that graph.
Click to expand...

I do not have that. I only have NVIDIA with label "GPU 0" - but the # next to MP does indicate it is enabled just not sure how?
And according to intel website the CPU CamMan1000 has says it should have quick sync.
 
BI has always been bad at telling the user when HW accel is working or not. I'm pretty sure you can enable it on completely incompatible systems (like one with an AMD CPU) and BI won't say a thing, it will just gracefully fall back to software decoding.

Generally you can also tell if it is working by disabling it globally across all cameras and seeing if CPU usage changed. That is how we used to do it before Windows made it easy to look in task manager to see GPU usage.
 
bp2008 said:
BI has always been bad at telling the user when HW accel is working or not. I'm pretty sure you can enable it on completely incompatible systems (like one with an AMD CPU) and BI won't say a thing, it will just gracefully fall back to software decoding.

Generally you can also tell if it is working by disabling it globally across all cameras and seeing if CPU usage changed. That is how we used to do it before Windows made it easy to look in task manager to see GPU usage.
Click to expand...

Ok so go to Hardware Accelerated Decode - select no and restart?

I did that and the # next to MP is gone from Blue Iris Status. NO CPU difference.

So quick sync is working I just don't have intel GPU showing in task manager?
 
I have this problem only with Reolink Cameras (410 and 420). If I choose my GeForce 1070 GPU for Hardware Acceleration, it works fine but if I switch to the Intel UHD 630 (Coffee Lake) on the same system, it fails and disables the Hardware Acceleration.
I have other Cams (Ubiquiti and Hikvision) connected to the same system and I can use the Intel GPU for those. Only the Reolink give me trouble.
 
@msupport Are your Reolink cameras sending H.264? That is the only video codec which works with Quick Sync in Blue Iris. H.265 works with Nvidia acceleration, but I don't recommend using it for that unless you really need the CPU savings. Power consumption is typically higher when using Nvidia acceleration.
 
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