Blue Iris

(If this is in the wrong forum, my apologies.)

As the title says, I have some questions about Blue Iris recording video to network attached storage. I'll do my best to be clear, but I'm not sure I even know the right questions to ask yet.

I have Blue Iris running on a Win 10 box, and I also have a NAS box that I'd like to dump/record the video to (rather than keep it on the PC that BI is running on).

In the "Clips & archiving" dialog box I found the settings for storage, but I'm unclear on what the recommended setup should be for network storage. I've read through a lot of the Help pages but I'm still not sure- maybe I'm missing something.

In the "Folders" part of the "Clips & archiving" dialog box is a path, currently set to "c:\BlueIris\New". Is this where longer-term video files get saved or transferred to? In other words, is this the main storage area for video clips?

Can I set that path to a folder on the NAS box? If so, is there a specific directory structure I should use/create or can I name the directory something else?

I have more or less the same question for the "database" path. The "database path" setting has a note that says it should ideally remain on "Local/Fast".

Could I (or should I) set that to a folder on the NAS box? And as above, is there a specific directory structure I should use/create for the database setting or can I name the directory something else? Can I set it to the same folder as the "Folders" is set to above?

I'm on a pretty fast network so I don't think speed would be an issue, but is there another reason to always keep this path local? Is it mainly a matter of needing fast disk access?


And finally, does it matter one way or another if I installed BI as administrator on Windows, and should I run BI as a regular user or as an administrator?


Thank you for reading this far and for any help you can offer!

No suggestions, tips, or guidance?

Just some suggestions on what to set the file paths (local or remote) would be helpful. Should I use the NAS for short term storage, long term storage, or both?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thixotropic wrote: ↑Wed Sep 11, 2019 5:48 pm No suggestions, tips, or guidance?

Just some suggestions on what to set the file paths (local or remote) would be helpful. Should I use the NAS for short term storage, long term storage, or both?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I use NAS shares for all 4 - New, Alerts and Storage. Off the top of my head I save New for 14 days (adjust these depending on your storage capacity) and then it moves to Storage. Alerts I save for 30 days and then delete. I figure if there's something that happened that wasn't caught via a triggered alert, I can go back and look at the last 14 days of continuous recording for whichever camera or cameras I want. Obviously if your needs are different, adjust accordingly.

-joni-

Thank you, rjchu, that's what I was trying to figure out.

I'm going to go ahead and switch everything over to the NAS. I currently have the directory /BlueIris/Stored/ set up on the NAS, but it makes sense to have them all there in one place for a complete record.

rjchu wrote: ↑Tue Sep 24, 2019 2:54 pm

Thixotropic wrote: ↑Wed Sep 11, 2019 5:48 pm No suggestions, tips, or guidance?

Just some suggestions on what to set the file paths (local or remote) would be helpful. Should I use the NAS for short term storage, long term storage, or both?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I use NAS shares for all 4 - New, Alerts and Storage. Off the top of my head I save New for 14 days (adjust these depending on your storage capacity) and then it moves to Storage. Alerts I save for 30 days and then delete. I figure if there's something that happened that wasn't caught via a triggered alert, I can go back and look at the last 14 days of continuous recording for whichever camera or cameras I want. Obviously if your needs are different, adjust accordingly.

-joni-

I've been using BI4 for a long while and one thing I never figured out....

If all storage is on the same partition, what is the advantage of the "new" vs "stored" locations? I just have everything dump into one location and then recycle when full.

Maybe if using a NAS for long term storage while keeping newer stuff locally it might make sense.

In your opinion is BI4 is better or more stable than BI5?

I've read a fair bit about 4 versus 5 and there are more than a few people who prefer BI4 over BI5, citing all sorts of stability issues and other problems. I'm currently seeing BI5 regularly dropping the video from a pair of Wyze V2 cameras, even though the cameras still work fine in the Wyze app and in tinyCam and Zoneminder. There's almost nothing left to rule out except Blue Iris.

HeneryH wrote: ↑Sat Sep 28, 2019 2:50 pm I've been using BI4 for a long while and one thing I never figured out....

If all storage is on the same partition, what is the advantage of the "new" vs "stored" locations? I just have everything dump into one location and then recycle when full.

Maybe if using a NAS for long term storage while keeping newer stuff locally it might make sense.