Recordings look jerky

New Daddy

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I'm still experimenting with Blue Iris.

The recordings look jerky.
I think it's because the FPS in the mainstream is in the 3-5 FPS range.
I made sure to set the FPS at 15, as the optimization guide suggested, but it turns out that my Vivotek camera's FPS only sets the maximum FPS, not a fixed value.
How do I get around this?
 

sebastiantombs

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To get around that you'll need to upgrade your cameras to Dahua, Hikvision or those same cameras marketed by others like Amcrest. The low end, consumer grade, cameras play all sorts of tricks with the video stream, frame rate, iframe/key frame, bit rate, exposure(shutter) speed and so on. Have a look at a night video from your cameras with motion in the scene. Guaranteed it will be blurry and not very useful.
 

wittaj

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This post is showing why Blue Iris and Reolinks do not work well together, but the same principles applies for almost any low end consumer grade camera. It is just Reolinks is one of the more consumer end cameras people buy and come to this site as to why it is pointed out often about. I have a cheapo camera for overview purposes so it doesn't matter, but it exhibits this same behavior even though in the settings I can set an iframe...

But yea, if you cannot force a FPS, then the camera is slowing the FPS way down, which will result in jerky video...

This was a screenshot of a member here where they had set these cameras to 15FPS within the cameras (I suspect you will be missing motion that you do not know you are missing....):

1617133192782.png


Now look at they key - that is the iframes. Blue Iris works best when the FPS and the iframes match. Now this is a ratio, so it should be a 1 if it matches the FPS. The iframes not matching (that you cannot fix or change with a reolink) is why they miss motion in Blue Iris and why people have problems. This is mainly why people are having issues with these cameras and there are many threads showing the issues people have with this manufacturer and Blue Iris. It is these same games that make the camera look great as a still image or video but turn to crap once motion is introduced.

The Blue Iris developer has indicated that for best reliability, sub stream frame rate should be equal to the main stream frame rate and these cameras cannot do that and there is nothing you can do about that with these cameras... The iframe rates (something these cameras do not allow you to set) should equal the FPS, but at worse case be no more than double. This example shows the cameras going down to a keyrate of 0.25 means that the iframe rates are over 4 times the FPS and that is why motion detection is a disaster with these cameras and Blue Iris...A value of 0.5 or less is considered insufficient to trust for motion triggers reliably...try to do AI Tools and it will be useless...

Compounding the matter even worse...motion detection is based on the substream and look at the substream FPS - they dropped down to below 6 FPS with an iframe/key rate of 0.25 - you will miss motion most of the time with that issue...

Blue Iris is great and works with probably more camera brands than most VMS programs, but there are brands that don't work well or not at all - Rings, Arlos, Nest, Some Zmodo cams use proprietary systems and cannot be used with Blue Iris, and for a lot of people Reolink doesn't work well either.

Now compare above to mine and cameras that follow industry standards that allow you to actually set parameters and they don't manipulate them. You will see that my FPS match what I set in the camera, and the 1.00 key means the iframe matches:

1614139197822.png


So the question is, in the camera status section in Blue Iris, which KEY number are your cameras showing....1.00 or something less than 0.5? And what FPS is it showing when there is no motion?
 
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