What are blank spaces in the time line ??

[Stev Wolf]

When I look at the time line sometimes there is a coloured lines and other times blank spaces. Note the picture below .
There is a space between the pink and blue bars (which represent cameras) But there is also no blue above pink and no pink bar below blue.
Other times the colours do show up above and below each other. I dont understand what this means.
This is an older version of software. Release 4.8.6.3 W32 .

Thank you.

 

[bp2008]

The colored bars exist wherever there is recorded video for a camera of that color. So that little screenshot means you have video from a hot pink camera (or multiple hot pink cameras) that ends at midnight on June 18, 2021. Then you have video from dull-blue colored cameras starting around 12:20 AM and ending around 3:30 AM.

One thing I am not actually sure of is the effect of the "combine or cut" function that is enabled by default in camera properties > Record tab. That might cause the appearance of there being a lot more video than actually exists, just because of having a long combine time.

 

[bp2008]

One thing I am not actually sure of is the effect of the "combine or cut" function that is enabled by default in camera properties > Record tab. That might cause the appearance of there being a lot more video than actually exists, just because of having a long combine time.

Ugh. The answer is yes, combined clips do in fact appear as long unbroken time spans on the timeline. How disappointing. For some reason I thought that was not the case ... because ... you know ... it is insane I guess.

 

[Stev Wolf]

Thank you for your answer. Let me see if I understand you?? Its not easy.

What you seem to be saying is that if you have the cut time set to 8 hours, then there will be an 8 hour coloured bar, so long as there was at least one triggered motion. (set to motion detect).
However that does not mean I have 8 hours of video. I just have video for the event based on the settings I have set up for that Camera/profile, say 1 minute if the event was just 1 minute. As indicated by the walking man symbol.
In the picture ABOVE the combine or cut time which appears to have taken place at about 12pm (makes sense) shows that there were no Pink camera triggers and for about 15 mins or so there were no blue triggers, but then blue triggered because there was movement.
I dont know if I have this right. However it seem odd because on little used camera I just have a little bit of Blue. Not a whole 4 hours for example of blue. Which I have that camera set to. 4 hour cut/combine.

 

[bp2008]

Yeah. I think you are understanding that correctly. Your color bar goes from the beginning of the clip file to the end of the clip file, so you could have bars up to 4 hours long with a 4 hour cut/combine setting.

Note if you zoom out, Blue Iris can merge close-together bars making them appear unbroken until you zoom in to see finer detail.

Here's a little screenshot from Blue Iris 5 where the timeline is a little different styled.



See on my system I don't use "combine or cut", so the color bars actually show only where there is video.

And I set up 7 different camera colors. And right there during that time, 4 of my cameras were triggered and made short recordings.

But there are only 3 color bars because two of the cameras were the same gray color.

Technically there's a 4th color bar, orange, at the bottom, but all that means is "some camera was triggered during this time span". Evidently Blue Iris 4 does not have this.

 

[Stev Wolf]

Thanks . So since you dont use combine or clip, that means you have physically many small video files on your hard disk?

 

[bp2008]

Yes, a couple hundred thousand. It isn't really a problem.

 

[Stev Wolf]

Yikes. Ok thanks. I gotta write all this down cause I forget so much.