BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

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tombone
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2019 2:21 pm

BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by tombone »

Add you feature suggestions here.
spammenotinoz
Posts: 51
Joined: Tue Jul 16, 2019 11:44 am

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by spammenotinoz »

I am actually very happy with BI.
I have 3 feature requests
a) H.265 Intel CPU Hardware Decoding
b) Motion Detection to operate on sub-streams (sure you can manually set this up to then trigger recording on the HD channels, but there is a bug in the triggers that stop recording despite continual movement)
Sub-streams would also be good for remote viewing.
Background to this is, it takes very little resources to record the 4k streams, but when you activate motion detection against these and have a few cams, you need a lot more grunt.
Motion detection against the sub-streams uses sfa resources. Prior to v5, I had motion detection on sub-streams, triggering groups, but as per above the triggers stop, even if there is repeated movement.
c) A sync option. BI5 introduced the "sync with cam" and "sync with profile", however they don't refresh after changes. ie: If I make a change to the CAM A, all the other profiles which are set to "sync" don't get the update until I go in and load them, view and then save. Need to do this for the first profile on every cam, then it seems to take. So something like "refresh" \ "sync" \ "refresh" would be good.
PerryG
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 2:23 pm

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by PerryG »

I have a camera recording activity at a birdfeeder and I watch the recorded video almost every night. I was spoiled with the ease of controlling the playback speed in BI4, and I feel like BI5 has taken a step back in that area.

Ideally, I'd like to see the original BI4 playback buttons and their functionality integrated with the BI5 sliders. The buttons in BI4 were all right next to each other and were very easy to navigate. I could play, fast forward, slow down, and step through frames pretty easily. I can understand that it might not be intuitive for the user to keep pressing Play in order to increase the playback speed, so adding the sliders to the BI4 buttons might be a good alternative.

If that cannot be done, I would suggest the following:

1) Similar to how it worked in BI4, if the video is already playing and I click the Play arrow (>) the speed of the playback should be doubled. To increase the playback speed in BI5, I have to position my mouse over the slider in the position I think relates to the correct speed and click there.

2) Conversely, if the video is already playing and I click the Reverse arrow (<) the speed of playback should be reduced by half. I believe this is how BI4 used to work.

Thanks for considering these updates!
tombone
Posts: 16
Joined: Fri Jul 05, 2019 2:21 pm

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by tombone »

My no.1 feature request: Remove the artificial 64 cam limit.
gbguy
Posts: 9
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2019 7:09 pm

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by gbguy »

What irks me about BI 5 (and keeps me from exploring it further) is that if you open a clip or alert you no longer have a "Camera Properties" button or the availability of a right-click popup menu that can access Camera Properties. BI 4 gave you immediate access to Camera Properties from the opened clip/alert which was useful if you were adjusting your motion detection.
JimBoCA
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Jul 31, 2019 11:01 pm

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by JimBoCA »

spammenotinoz wrote: Fri Aug 02, 2019 1:47 pm I am actually very happy with BI.
I have 3 feature requests
a) H.265 Intel CPU Hardware Decoding
b) Motion Detection to operate on sub-streams (sure you can manually set this up to then trigger recording on the HD channels, but there is a bug in the triggers that stop recording despite continual movement)
Sub-streams would also be good for remote viewing.
Background to this is, it takes very little resources to record the 4k streams, but when you activate motion detection against these and have a few cams, you need a lot more grunt.
Motion detection against the sub-streams uses sfa resources. Prior to v5, I had motion detection on sub-streams, triggering groups, but as per above the triggers stop, even if there is repeated movement.
c) A sync option. BI5 introduced the "sync with cam" and "sync with profile", however they don't refresh after changes. ie: If I make a change to the CAM A, all the other profiles which are set to "sync" don't get the update until I go in and load them, view and then save. Need to do this for the first profile on every cam, then it seems to take. So something like "refresh" \ "sync" \ "refresh" would be good.
As a new user just starting out with BI5 the sync issue you mentioned is really killing me since I am playing around with getting all my options correct.

I would also like if the sync had an option to copy all the settings so you could see that they were changed then uncheck the sync to customize for that camera.
randrew1996
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Sep 19, 2019 6:43 pm

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by randrew1996 »

First Off,
BI is the best bang for your buck for surveillance software. Great stuff guys. The below is just a golden dream feature request:

We are using BI in a corporate environment (and have been customers > 5 yrs, now) and have bought multiple licenses. I consider BI to have been an excellent implementation for us.

I had read about the remote management features added in version 5 and got really excited, (though when I installed, it turned out they were a little different than I was thinking).

What would be really handy for multi-server outfits, is for some way to seamlessly present a unified security system to our users. We currently have two servers and will need to add a third soon (because of high definition camera processing demands, not because of the 64 camera limit). With this, we allow access to various cameras to several users. So, we keep basically the same user accounts on each system (and try to keep them synced) and split up the cameras by some kind of logic (whether it's to balance camera load or try to keep it so most users only need access to one server, etc...), and instruct our users to go to whichever camera server (through web browser) they need for whichever camera they happen to be looking at. It makes the management a little difficult trying to keep everything the balanced between the systems, and since permissions are handled through groups, we have to keep all group information synced. It would be fantastic if there were some way for users (through the web interface) to be able to access more than one server (granted, all they really have to do is bookmark both ip addresses, but for anyone who's ever worked in corporate IT, you'd realize that is a big ask). Here were my thoughts (from easiest to most complete):
1. You just define link to the other BI servers (maybe through the remote management screen). Then, through the web UI, the user can try to 'switch' to the other server, and the system will try the same user login against that system. (Basically, this would be two systems still separated, but the web interface would present to the user they were together. You'd still have the issue of syncing all user accounts, camera groups, etc (if you're the admin), but it would at least present as one single security system.
2. Or, Going for the Gold here. If one server could be defined as the 'master' (which would host the database and webserver), and other installations could be camera processing slaves.

Anyway, really love the software. We had used Zoneminder before, but had to switch because our HR department couldn't figure out the interface (they liked the BI one much better), but as an admin, I have still longed for the master/slave features that zoneminder had.

Food for thought
Millstone
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Sep 17, 2019 2:04 am

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by Millstone »

More flexibility in customizing camera views inside the app. Especially in playback mode.
Millstone
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Sep 17, 2019 2:04 am

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by Millstone »

randrew1996 wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2019 7:27 pm First Off,
BI is the best bang for your buck for surveillance software. Great stuff guys. The below is just a golden dream feature request:

We are using BI in a corporate environment (and have been customers > 5 yrs, now) and have bought multiple licenses. I consider BI to have been an excellent implementation for us.

I had read about the remote management features added in version 5 and got really excited, (though when I installed, it turned out they were a little different than I was thinking).

What would be really handy for multi-server outfits, is for some way to seamlessly present a unified security system to our users. We currently have two servers and will need to add a third soon (because of high definition camera processing demands, not because of the 64 camera limit). With this, we allow access to various cameras to several users. So, we keep basically the same user accounts on each system (and try to keep them synced) and split up the cameras by some kind of logic (whether it's to balance camera load or try to keep it so most users only need access to one server, etc...), and instruct our users to go to whichever camera server (through web browser) they need for whichever camera they happen to be looking at. It makes the management a little difficult trying to keep everything the balanced between the systems, and since permissions are handled through groups, we have to keep all group information synced. It would be fantastic if there were some way for users (through the web interface) to be able to access more than one server (granted, all they really have to do is bookmark both ip addresses, but for anyone who's ever worked in corporate IT, you'd realize that is a big ask). Here were my thoughts (from easiest to most complete):
1. You just define link to the other BI servers (maybe through the remote management screen). Then, through the web UI, the user can try to 'switch' to the other server, and the system will try the same user login against that system. (Basically, this would be two systems still separated, but the web interface would present to the user they were together. You'd still have the issue of syncing all user accounts, camera groups, etc (if you're the admin), but it would at least present as one single security system.
2. Or, Going for the Gold here. If one server could be defined as the 'master' (which would host the database and webserver), and other installations could be camera processing slaves.

Anyway, really love the software. We had used Zoneminder before, but had to switch because our HR department couldn't figure out the interface (they liked the BI one much better), but as an admin, I have still longed for the master/slave features that zoneminder had.

Food for thought
Also +1 to everything this guy said, as I'm using it in a simliar environment. Ability to join to Active Directory would be nice.
HeneryH
Posts: 678
Joined: Thu Jul 18, 2019 2:50 pm

Re: BI 5 Feature suggestion thread

Post by HeneryH »

Let users set their own passwords.

It it a big security no-no for me to have to set their passwords for them.
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