using Blue Iris to play back from hardware NVR on the same LAN

geezer

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Blue Iris has some features (e.g. mouse wheel zoom) that are missing from my hardware NVR.

I have been able to connect Blue Iris to live view each of the cameras via the NVR (not directly via the LAN) but I can't see how to play back the NVR's hard disk files.

This was very easy on CMS but on BI I am obviously missing something.

Cheers.
 

wittaj

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You cannot playback the HDD from the NVR through Blue Iris - you need HDD in the Blue Iris computer and recording to that.
 

geezer

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Thank you for the quick reply, though I'm sorry to hear it. BI seems to have a lot to offer but I won't use it to record.

Oh well, I'm stuck with CMS to do manual snapshots and mouse wheel zooming. Too bad CMS 3.0.0 still looks like it's written for DOS.
 

wittaj

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Why not use it to record? Most have found the granular ability to set motion triggers in BI to be superior to an NVR.
 

geezer

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I can see that BI is amazingly feature rich, but far beyond my needs. Not to mention that the cameras are all outdoors and there's cats and dogs everywhere.

Mainly I don't want to load down my two desktop PC's nor add a third one.
 

wittaj

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Well most of us have our cameras outdoors with cats and dogs and other animals everywhere LOL.

I'd take the HDD out of the NVR and put it in the desktop to use for BI LOL.

If you are simply using BI as the viewer, certainly the NVR viewer is sufficient for that, so why need BI?
 

geezer

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My Dahua NVR had a perfect mouse wheel zoom feature (big Plus). It did not support manual snapshots in Playback mode (big Minus).

Then, for several reasons, I switched to a generic ONVIF NVR. It doesn't support manual snapshots in live view or in playback. (bigger Minus). And the digital zoom is the usual rectangle bit that comes very close to being useless (huge Minus).

These are every day functions that make CCTV operation quicker and better. BI does those things, and much more, very well.
 

Flintstone61

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I think you'd have to surf to the IP address of the Dvr/Nvr and if it has web GUI login with admin and password.
Or like my nightowl dvr......i had to install Night owl CMS on my BI/Windows machine and view it through that app.
 
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