Blue Iris

I am a new Blue Iris 5 user. I have set my cameras to send 30fps at a max 3k bitrate, and they work fine doing so. My machine is perfectly capable of decoding/encoding all 6 of my cameras simultaneously at no more than 20% CPU. It's an i7-4770k, and I use Intel hardware acceleration which I can confirm with Task Manager. The video is smooth and there are no problems viewing, recording, decoding, encoding, analysing frames at 30fps. When I use UI3 to stream the group stream, I can get 30fps since I changed the webcast default FPS to 30 and that works fine. When I view individual cameras I get 30fps and that works fine. However, after at least 6 hours or so (I haven't calculated the exact time or if it's truly after exactly n hours that the issue begins), the UI3 frame rate I get drops from 30fps to a random and inconsistent FPS between 15 and 22 FPS varying wildly by the second. In other words, it's dropping random frames.

Note that when I view the group webcast, I still see 30 FPS for the webcast itself (confirmed by the counter in the bottom left), but the individual cameras are visually dropping frames even though the group webcast itself is not. Again, when I view individual cameras, the frame rate is between 15 and 22 FPS. I have already confirmed that the cameras are still sending 30 FPS and that there are no issues with the camera stream. I've confirmed that by streaming from the individual cameras themselves, and still seeing 30 FPS. I've also confirmed inside of the Blue Iris statistics window that it's still receiving 30 FPS, and that the megapixels per second has not changed at all (still around 320MP/s). So, clearly Blue Iris is receiving 30 FPS.

What's interesting is that when there is motion, when I go to a clip that was recorded due to motion and right-click in UI3 and export as AVI, then that clip DOES have 30 FPS even though when viewed via UI3 it has 15-22 FPS. That means Blue Iris clearly recorded the clip at 30 FPS but when streaming through UI3 there is an issue that's causing frames to be dropped. Note that at no point does the server get overloaded, and the CPU always remains under 20%.

The only way I have been able to fix the FPS issue is by restarting Blue Iris. I have tried modifying every setting imaginable, from the encoder settings, reducing bitrates, resolutions, trying NVIDIA hardware acceleration instead of Intel, changing webcast group FPS, changing veryfast/superfast/ultrafast, etc. Nothing has helped. Note that I use "direct-to-disk" recording and I don't re-encode the streams (other than for UI3 viewing which is done in real time obviously.)

I am able to reliably reproduce this issue. After Blue Iris has been open for a day, the FPS degrades. If I restart Blue Iris, it's fixed, and then a day later the same thing happens. It has happened every day so far. Note that I run Blue Iris as a service.

Everything about this tells me "bug", since just by restarting Blue Iris I am able to fix the issue and there is no resource overload on the machine hosting the instance of Blue Iris, so please let me know how I can help you to troubleshoot and fix this issue.

Note that I do not need to be educated about why 30 FPS is a waste of resources and that there's minimal benefit to going above 15 FPS and so on; I am not looking for those excuses. My environment is perfectly capable of streaming, recording, encoding, decoding, analysing 30 FPS and this is what I have chosen to use and paid for a service that I expect to be able to handle this frame rate.

Thank you!

That's a lot to take in.

- Are you using UI3 to view, and, keeping UI3 connected for extended periods?
- Does the BI program itself degrade the fps live preview & full screen camera view, or, only UI3?
- What is your 'Live Preview Rate' in BI?
- What are your cameras 'Max Rate' (fps) set at in BI?

Thanks for your reply.

- I am not keeping UI3 open.
- I wish I could give you an answer for this but the machine is in another country so I am only able to access via VNC, where obviously I won't be able to tell if the images are in fact updating 30 times per second in the Blue Iris console.
- The Live Preview Rate is set to 1 FPS to make things easy on VNC.
- The Max Rate is set to 30 FPS.

I decided to get the additional information you requested (it was easier than expected), and provided some clarifications.

- I use UI3 to view the cameras, connecting as needed. I don't keep it open. So in the morning I would check, and it would be degraded.
- Just now, I used OBS to remotely record the remote screen at 30 FPS and was able to confirm that even with Limit Live Preview Rate disabled, I am seeing the same random frame drops in the Blue Iris console itself (it's been >1 day and the issue is currently present.) The performance of the console is thus on par with UI3.
- For the test I just made, I disabled the Live Preview Rate limit to make sure it updates the maximum frame rate (30 FPS.)
- The camera Max Rate in Blue Iris is 333334 [30.00 fps].

A few additional notes:
- VNC is not "Remote Desktop", and thus it's not caught by "Video during emote Desktop: 5-sec update" in case you or someone thinks this affected the OBS recording.
- When I restarted Blue Iris and redid the recording, the video was smooth, running at full 30 FPS with no drops. So the problem, which is that after half a day the frame rates drops to 15-22 FPS, is present on both UI3 and the Blue Iris console.
- As I mentioned in the original post, motion recordings still occur at 30 FPS even when Blue Iris is "degraded" in this way which I confirmed by exporting the AVI of the motion recording and then viewing it locally, even though in UI3 itself the recording drops frames when viewing.
- Motion recordings that were recorded before Blue Iris degraded DO still stream at 30 FPS. Only motion recordings that are recorded after Blue Iris degraded have the 15-22 FPS issue, but NOT if I export and download the video.
- As the last point should make clear, since I can stream any other recording that was recorded before Blue Iris degraded, there is no problem with network/Internet connectivity or throughput.

Thanks again for your time. Hopefully we can solve this!

Wow. That's a lot of follow up. Good information. Unfortunately, I'm not that level of expert!

I would say if the continuous/motion recordings are all at the proper fps, then, it's not BI. Must be the UI3, VNC... something getting in the way and dropping frames - possibility an issue of quality vs speed?

Since it resolves when restarting BI, but the records are still fine, it must have something to do with the webserver/UI3 - but I really have no idea.

One possibility would be to try TeamViewer to see if it happens?

I would recommend sending you posts here to BI support. I'm sure they can help. They may even offer to remotely login to look it over.

Could this be an issue with Intel hardware acceleration ? I remember people having issues with memory leaks and all sorts of other stuff. I can't try to recreate that issue here as I'm using an AMD cpu.

I emailed support, and they replied along the lines of "...it would be a pipelining issue with the hardware decoding. Double-check you have the latest drivers installed for this."

Although (at least to me) updating drivers is a common suggestion that may not yield any results, I did notice that the machine in question had a version of the Intel Graphics driver from 2016. Updating the Intel Graphics driver to a version in 2018 actually DID fix this problem! I have been able to get 30 FPS consistently for over 2 days now. I will reply to this thread after a few more days for a final confirmation.

Thanks for all the help.

blueirisuser wrote: ↑Fri Jul 05, 2019 3:59 am I am a new Blue Iris 5 user. I have set my cameras to send 30fps at a max 3k bitrate, and they work fine doing so. My machine is perfectly capable of decoding/encoding all 6 of my cameras simultaneously at no more than 20% CPU. It's an i7-4770k, and I use Intel hardware acceleration which I can confirm with Task Manager. The video is smooth and there are no problems viewing, recording, decoding, encoding, analysing frames at 30fps. When I use UI3 to stream the group stream, I can get 30fps since I changed the webcast default FPS to 30 and that works fine. When I view individual cameras I get 30fps and that works fine. However, after at least 6 hours or so (I haven't calculated the exact time or if it's truly after exactly n hours that the issue begins), the UI3 frame rate I get drops from 30fps to a random and inconsistent FPS between 15 and 22 FPS varying wildly by the second. In other words, it's dropping random frames.
Thank you!

I had this issue using a system with an M2.0 SSD (okay so it was a western digital green, but not a premium SSD), swapped the target out to a 7200rpm old SATA laptop drive, and stable frame rates and no dropped frames during record or playback.
Also if you are not using BVR format, ie: MPEG4 container, BI isn't doing the decoding, it's whatever decoder you have installed\setup with windows. This is used by UI3 when playing back not BVR formats.
30fps playback via IE\Chrome is not realistic.

did you ever resolve this issue? if not I wonder if I might help troubleshoot this.

My mind goes to recordings and the seek function on the files after a certain time.
are you breaking up the files or recording in one large file per day?
the reason i ask is when you restart blueiris it end the stream to that file and starts a new one, reducing the seek on that file and as such potentially eliminating the issue.
can you try to record files on 1 hour splits and see if you have this issue still?

Hi,

Updating the Intel Graphics driver to a version in 2018 actually DID fix this problem! I have been able to get 30 FPS consistently for over 2 days now. I will reply to this thread after a few more days for a final confirmation.

I think we solved the OP's problem some time ago, although he didn't come back again with confirmation.