Possible to pull camera stream from another BI server installation?

[erkme73]

I have a neighbor with a BI set up. I'd like to pull one of her feeds from one of her cameras without connecting to her camera directly (via port forwarding). Instead, I'd like to create a camera and point to a specific camera (or group) being streamed from her server.

IOW, I would like to have her cameras show up on MY BI server, but be sourced from her BI server rather than directly from her cameras.

Is this possible?

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

I have no input on if it can be done via Blue Iris, but what about doing a point to point network connection? Then you could connect directly the camera locally, and not use up internet bandwidth with all of the added latency of going across the internet

It will also then work if either of your internet connection goes out

Wireless Wire | MikroTik

1 Gbps full duplex without cables!

mikrotik.com

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-LocoM2-2-PACK-Nanostation-Outdoor/dp/B0161G653W/

 

[erkme73]

I have no input on if it can be done via Blue Iris, but what about doing a point to point network connection? Then you could connect directly the camera locally, and not use up internet bandwidth with all of the added latency of going across the internet

It will also then work if either of your internet connection goes out

Wireless Wire | MikroTik

1 Gbps full duplex without cables!

mikrotik.com

https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-LocoM2-2-PACK-Nanostation-Outdoor/dp/B0161G653W/

Well, this is a bit of a pilot test for neighborhood watching... This particular neighbor is about 2 miles away so I don't really have that option.

I know I used to be able to connect going to the Internet Explorer days where the active-x plugin would provide a path that would work. I'm still playing to see if I can't get that to go, but so far, everything is striking out.

 

[sebastiantombs]

Without opening a port on the remote end or setting up a VPN on the remote end, I don't think there's a way to do that reliably.

Alternately, maybe stream the cameras to ScrewTube and view it through there. That will place a fair load on the remote internet connection though.

 

[erkme73]

YES! Got it, although it's still not ideal...

Right-clicking on UI3 on the live stream allows for "open image in new tab". That URL provides the proper syntax/string. But I have to choose JPG pull and tha'ts pretty inefficient. The bitrate is 5mb+ for something that on H264 is only about 30kbps. There has to be a better way.

 

[erkme73]

Without opening a port on the remote end or setting up a VPN on the remote end, I don't think there's a way to do that reliably.

Alternately, maybe stream the cameras to ScrewTube and view it through there. That will place a fair load on the remote internet connection though.

Yeah, those workarounds may work, but are far from easily deployed across several installations. Although, both ends are running at 1GB ISP speeds.

 

[looney2ns]

You can remotely connect to other BI systems with your BI install. Search for "Remote Management" in the Bi help file.
Or just UI3 instance from the remote BI server.
A vpn or zerotier would make this secure.

 

[bp2008]

@erkme73

Yes, you can do this with better-than-jpeg performance. Does the neighbor have a very recent version of BI running, with "direct-to-wire" streaming support?

I'll do a quick test but I am pretty sure you can pull an RTSP stream from Blue Iris's web server using "direct-to-wire" so it will have minimal CPU cost for their BI server and no quality loss when streaming to you. Otherwise you could at least get a re-encoded RTSP stream (might be ideal if bandwidth usage is the greater concern compare to CPU usage).

 

[bp2008]

Okay, here is an example of an RTSP URL you can use to pull a camera's video with Blue Iris using direct-to-wire. Direct-to-wire requires the camera to be H.264 and direct-to-disc, otherwise direct-to-wire will not work.

Assumes the Blue Iris address is 192.168.0.10 and port number is 81.

rtsp:/192.168.0.10:81/cameraShortName?d2w=1&decode=1&audio=0

The above says to enable direct-to-wire, use the main stream (for sub stream use decode=-1), audio=0 says to leave out the audio stream (otherwise use audio=1 for ulaw audio, audio=2 for FLAC audio, not sure which if any is supported by Blue Iris when pulling the stream).

If direct-to-wire is not available or not compatible, you can specify some encoding parameters instead:

rtsp:/192.168.0.10:81/cameraShortName?stream=0&h=1080&kbps=2048&gop=60

The above says to use the "Streaming 0" profile from Blue Iris's web server advanced page, but override it to do 1080 pixels on the stream height, 2048 Kbps bit rate, and iframe interval of 60 frames.

And finally if Blue Iris's RTSP serving capability is not working reliably (it already stopped working for one camera in my testing) then you can try streaming using HTTP but these are really janky streaming endpoints that don't work terribly well in my experience.

/h264/{cam-short-name}/temp.ts --- For an MPEG2 transport stream.
/h264/{cam-short-name}/temp.h264 --- For a raw H.264 stream, no frame rate data is included and no audio.

Some of the usual URL parameters work with some of these streams, but some (like d2w) do not work.

 

[erkme73]

Thanks, that looks promising. I've tried using this in a circular setting (new camera aiming at my server, pointing to a h264 D2D camera). I'm sure I've got something misconfigured, but I get a no-signal, RTSP: error 503 service unavailable.





Any other ideas?

 

[IReallyLikePizza2]

Windows Firewall is on or off? Its possible its blocking port 8882

 

[erkme73]

Nope, good suggestion, but all firewall options are disable. I've been using 8882 for several years both on the wan and lan side.

 

[concord]

First we need to see if the RTSP entry you are showing above works.

Try using VLC video streamer on your computer. Assuming your BI web server is set to port 81, select Media / Open Network Stream, then enter in: rtsp://usernameassword@MyBlueIrisIPaddress:81/ShortCameraName

Next, if that works, try the same using your neighbors BI address, login/password, port, etc. assuming you know their internet facing IP address.

VLC:

Official download of VLC media player, the best Open Source player - VideoLAN

www.videolan.org

Instead of port forwarding, the other option is to use ZeroTier and set up your own private network that will include both BI systems in it. And access the cam that way.

Zero Tier remote access to Blue Iris

Any network gurus care to comment on using Zero Tier for remote access. I need to access cameras on a property 40ks from home. Also would like to make Plex accessible https://www.zerotier.com/

ipcamtalk.com

 

[erkme73]

First we need to see if the RTSP entry you are showing above works.

Try using VLC video streamer on your computer. Assuming your BI web server is set to port 81, select Media / Open Network Stream, then enter in: rtsp:/usernameassword@MyBlueIrisIPaddress:81/ShortCameraName

Next, if that works, try the same using your neighbors BI address, login/password, port, etc. assuming you know their internet facing IP address.

VLC:

Official download of VLC media player, the best Open Source player - VideoLAN

www.videolan.org

Instead of port forwarding, the other option is to use ZeroTier and set up your own private network that will include both BI systems in it. And access the cam that way.

Zero Tier remote access to Blue Iris

Any network gurus care to comment on using Zero Tier for remote access. I need to access cameras on a property 40ks from home. Also would like to make Plex accessible https://www.zerotier.com/

ipcamtalk.com

Using the DDNS URL, port, and UN/PW for neighbor's BI stream on VLC, it works! So how do I implement that URL/syntax in BI?

 

[bp2008]

Using the DDNS URL, port, and UN/PW for neighbor's BI stream on VLC, it works! So how do I implement that URL/syntax in BI?

Just like you were doing with your own test system.

 

[concord]

Ok, had a chance to try it myself, using one of my local cams. using the rtsp:/usernameassword@MyBlueIrisIPaddress:81/ShortCameraName technique and creating a new cam with the RTSP stream info, but have no luck doing so. Not sure why it won't work. Maybe someone else has a clue.

The only way I got it to work is using mjpg stream instead (http:///usernameassword@MyBlueIrisIPaddress:81/mjpg/ShortCameraName?).

Also note that CPU goes up from 45% to 68% (old 4th gen CPU i5-4590) when using BI interface after adding it:

 

[erkme73]

Just like you were doing with your own test system.

Boy was I overthinking it. It absolutely works! Thanks!

 

[TonyR]

I realize I'm late to the party but I wrote this up over 4 years ago in April 2018, FWIW. Maybe your search didn't find it. ==>> Show cam stream from a Remote BI server on a Local BI server

 

[erkme73]

Ok, I haven't explored @TonyR's suggestion yet.

FWIW, my URL/syntax is RTSP:/IP_address_of_remote_serverort/short_camera_name and that works great. The UN/PW were parsed out of the original URL containing UNW@IP. However, once I add any of the decoding/audio parms to the end, it fails with a 503 error - including on the VLC client. I'll have to get on the neighor's server to see whether the direct-to-wire functionality is enabled.

 

[TonyR]

Ok, I haven't explored @TonyR's suggestion yet.

FWIW, that example works with older v5's; mine is 5.4.7.11 from June 2021 and the tanning salon in the example is 5.3.3.11 from Oct. 2020.