Blue Iris

Hi all

I've been using BI for a few years. I tried a few different available NVR software programs when I first deployed my camera system and found BI was the best - in both performance and interface. At least from what I came across at the time.

My system has expanded, and now I have 12 cameras. 9 are 1080p, and 3 are 5mp. Planning on upgrading all the cameras to 5mp. My server is dedicated to camera recording and network storage (but 99% camera - mainly an occasional backup NAS).
The system specs aren't crazy, but I had pretty much flawless performance with 12 1080p cameras so I figured I had a decent amount of overhead. It's dual Xeon X5672 @ 3.2ghz (8 physical 8 ht cores), 64gb ram, and a GeForce GT710 GPU.

When I've replaced 3 of the cameras with the 5mp cameras, I can not get a good frame rate on those 3 cams. I've adjusted the framerate in the camera UI, in BI settings, switched to H265, and everything was already direct-to-disk. I've also set the preview to the substream channel, which helped with CPU usage but did not help with recording rate. I even updated my subscription so that I could download the latest update of BI 5.

I was frustrated enough that I actually picked up an NVR that is supposed to be able to do 16 4k cams @ 30fps. Compared to BI, it's garbage and not anywhere near as user friendly. And it is only compatible with my new cameras so it would force me to upgrade the rest of them all at once.

Does anyone have any suggestions for either
Decent standalone NVR that can handle 16 4k streams, with a good UI/configurability
Other NVR software that may be less resource intensive
Other settings or adjustments to try in BI

Is my hardware just that out of date? What would be required if I wanted to upgrade all 12 cameras to 5mp with extra overhead to add another couple later on down the road? I'm seeing about 50-60% CPU, 20-30% GPU, and 1% Disk usage while having the app window fullscreen (my default state)

How about memory? How much do you have? What is the speed? Single or dual?
Are you using Pre-trigger?
What is your 'Receive buffer'?
What is your network speed?
What is your router speed?
Any Switches, POE's? What are there speeds?
What type of Cat cables do you use?
What gpu do you have? 20=30% seems high. My NVidia 740ti runs about 4-6% with BI.
Where is your BI database? Is it on a standalone HD or SSD?
Are you using D2D?

There's a lot of things here, as you know. Any adequate system should be able to run BI. My system lags on SC2 on some maps, but runs BI fine.

I went over all my settings from scratch and I seem to have gotten things running better. I don't think it was processing sub streams correctly before.

24/7 recording + motion detect
I am using D2D
64gb ram, 2x16gb channels per processor
All switches are gigabit as is the router. Have managed 16 port POE, managed 8 port POE, and unmanaged 8 port switches in 3 different buildings, all with cameras and other network traffic.
Everything is cat5e or cat6
GPU is GT710 as mentioned

If I can maintain the level of performance I have now that sub streams are working properly, I think I'd rather keep BI. I'll be able to tell better tomorrow when I have some more daylight and can test a few more things as far as framerate/performance is concerned

Everything is just so clunky on the NVR. Reviewing motion/recordings is just so difficult even through any web portal (compared to BI)

Thanks for the feedback

A screenshot of your camera status window would also help a lot - at least for me. I believe you can probably make this work with your existing system but there may be some tweaking that can be done here and there.

Looks like you have a nice system...
But, that GeForce GT710 GPU might be a bottleneck. I'm running a NVidia GeForce 750ti. Even that is no longer adequate for todays games.

What is your 'Live preview rate' set at? Lowering this makes a big difference. I have mine set to 10fps.

Having to wait for post approval for replies kinda stinks. I can understand for new topics but sucks having to wait half a day to respond to someones question in your own thread.

Anyway, now with 5x 5MP cameras and 7 1080p cameras, with substreams properly configured and functioning I am seeing ~30% CPU and ~10% GPU, and my laggy framerates are gone. I have 4 more 5mp cameras on the way and eventually they will all be 5mp.

Is there any way to overlay some system stats on the screen during full screen operation in BI? I'd like to see a live FPS display per camera or an overlay with system usage stats.

Take a look at using sub streams for motion processing. I currently have 16 4MP, two 2MP (1080p) and two 3MP cameras running on my BI server (FC630 with 14 cores of an E5-2699v3 CPU enabled and 64GB RAM) that is used for that and backups, and after switching to using sub streams, my CPU usage dropped SIGNIFICANTLY. I think it was typically running 50% or so with all but five of the 4MP and one of the 2MP cameras to around 5-7%. With the 20 cameras currently running on it, CPU usage is generally running around 10% as reported by task manager. And this is with no GPU to offload to.

Cougar281 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:08 am Take a look at using sub streams for motion processing. I currently have 16 4MP, two 2MP (1080p) and two 3MP cameras running on my BI server (FC630 with 14 cores of an E5-2699v3 CPU enabled and 64GB RAM) that is used for that and backups, and after switching to using sub streams, my CPU usage dropped SIGNIFICANTLY. I think it was typically running 50% or so with all but five of the 4MP and one of the 2MP cameras to around 5-7%. With the 20 cameras currently running on it, CPU usage is generally running around 10% as reported by task manager. And this is with no GPU to offload to.

Seems my usage is still high, even though it is much improved. What framerate are you recording/previewing at? Looks like I may still have some room to improve.

fuzzkill wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 11:26 am

Cougar281 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 1:08 am Take a look at using sub streams for motion processing. I currently have 16 4MP, two 2MP (1080p) and two 3MP cameras running on my BI server (FC630 with 14 cores of an E5-2699v3 CPU enabled and 64GB RAM) that is used for that and backups, and after switching to using sub streams, my CPU usage dropped SIGNIFICANTLY. I think it was typically running 50% or so with all but five of the 4MP and one of the 2MP cameras to around 5-7%. With the 20 cameras currently running on it, CPU usage is generally running around 10% as reported by task manager. And this is with no GPU to offload to.

Seems my usage is still high, even though it is much improved. What framerate are you recording/previewing at? Looks like I may still have some room to improve.

Most of my cameras are running at 15FPS, although four of them are running at 30FPS. For most use cases, 15FPS is plenty. I only have 30FPS running on cameras where there are vehicles and the most likely places people will be walking up to the front of my house.

I'm up to 7 5MP cams running 20FPS and all is still well. Have 2 more to put up before I need to order some more.

Might get a 4k to run at the front door, but looks like the system will do everything I need it to do - so I'm happy.

If someone could make an NVR with the configurability and ease of use of BlueIris ... it would kill. Maybe the BI team should work together to port BI to Linux or whatever the NVR's are running for OS.