Blue Iris Security Camera Optimizations You Need to Do

[@mikerufty1307]

How the crap did I miss that for the past 3 years. I had all the options set except the Don't encode unless needed on the camera setup. My 6 cameras went from 30% to 6% on an I7. You are the MAN!

[@chuckwyble7719]

Great video! Straight and to the point without the BS in between. My CPU usage went from the high 90-100% area down to as low as 3%. RAM was reduced from 4gig to 2.8gig. Awesome performance enhancement. Thank you sir.

[@ProAhole]

WTF! I was pricing new pc's today, because I didn't think I could add any more cameras to my current BI pc. Followed your first two tips about hardware acc and direct-to-disk, and cut cpu usage by more than half. I feel like an idiot, but thank you so much for this video! Haven't even finished it yet! KZbin's algorithm got it right this time. You have a new sub. Thanks again!

[@digiblurDIY]

Awesome! Saving time money and electricity in most cases. Thanks!

[@steveklein9335]

2023 and still very useful. Best straightforward explanation of sub streams. Now my 5 cameras use sub 15% of my CPU.

[@digiblurDIY]

Thanks! About to setup a new box myself!

[@guyaldrich5878]

I would like to see you do a walkthrough of the current version of blue Iris because I think your a good teacher and easy to understand !

[@andrewlhoover]

This is pretty useful. I had already made a lot of these changes but it had not dug into the new camera interface much since then. Also, I knew about the keyframes but didn't understand them much. Your overview was very helpful! Good Job!

[@tdenham735]

Great video for those thinking about trying Blue Iris or even people like myself who have used BI for about 6 years now. Thanks!!!

[@DatsunVents]

Nice I dropped my 4 Camera system from 90-100 down to less than 20%. Truly Unreal. I have 2 x 8MP camera, 1 x 3MP and one 2 MP camera. I think I can now add an addition 8 MP camera.

[@hoggeh]

I forgot to leave a comment here as I used this before as 4x 4K camera's was utilising a lot of CPU time and my fans were powering up to full speed to compensate and figured it wasn't normal. A bit of digging and came across this and my CPU usage now idles between 9% to around 30% depending on what I am doing and if I am using the app on the server. Definitely a good tutorial as I am not a big fan of blueiris because it only runs on windows but had to make do with it as most linux alternatives aren't as well made and packed with so much options in tweaking settings per camera or as a system all together. One thing I definitely noticed is I ran this in evaluation before buying it and had it running on a single disk that was shared with windows os. Not a good move as the OS alone was doing things like updates, disk checking like you stated so to help things along I put windows on a virtual guest host on a linux server where the two primary linux boot disks are in raid 1 and the disks then used for the vm's are in raid 5 and found that the server doesn't hang, responds quicker and overall quality of the footage saved is clearer as it doesn't appear to be glitching. Overall read/write with a software raid 5 gave the server some oomph to move along. My plan is to move to intel xeon cpu's next as I am running a i5 2500k with 32gb ram and although it's not struggling I intend to add another 2 camera's and up the quality of the footage stored. The i5 is a very reliable cpu and has proven it can handle this task very well though.

[@Bk13kvi]

YES!!! Bring more BlueIris videos :) Yummy!!

[@digiblurDIY]

I definitely will. Been running it for a couple years here so why not right?

[@kevinwhiten2804]

I would love to see more BlueIris videos. Especial one on motion detection.

[@zweetkonijn]

This video has been soo helpful for me! Thank you for making it. Currently I'm running 2 camera's on an NUC I5 with a CPU load of 2 to 5%. Before I watched this video it was 25 to 40%.

[@Joe_Galaska]

Please - more Blue Iris videos. There is much I need to learn.

[@marcusone1]

Great summary as always Digi! I strongly recommend that for surveillance, you should drop the FPS on the camera to 15 FPS, which is more than fast enough for motion detection and good recording of things happening. You don't need movie FPS to capture someone coming/going etc. I have 40 cameras, most are 1080p, about 10 are 2k-4k, on an i7-8th gen at 25% CPU :D

[@digiblurDIY]

Very much so! I did this before the whole substream option thing myself as even on an i7-6700 I was getting up there in CPU time. No where near 40 though! :) That definitely takes some organizational skills there. The only claim I've seen someone say they needed more FPS was they were lowering resolution and increasing frame rates as it gave them more frames to pick out a face or plate. But then I think to myself, but you already have fifteen frames per second. I wonder if they were misunderstanding the whole FPS thing.

[@normand30]

I have 16 4k amcrest cameras and my i7 cpu is always 100% and extreme lag. What settings do you recommend?

[@marcusone1]

@@normand30 there are some great guides if you google. you need to setup the new dual stream so that motion detection is on the lower resolution stream. Also make sure you drop the frame rate to 15 or less.

[@jmhm17]

Great tutorial. Ive been running BI for years and never really understood these settings. Thank you very much for the insight!

[@PJ-ee5mc]

This idea of using sub-streams is a real game changer! I am amazed by how much better my system operates now that I have done this with all 13 of my cameras. My CPU usage is now 18% versus the 95% it was prior to making these changes. The great thing about this is that you still view and record your videos in high res as long as you view them one at a time. On the grid layout they are low res but who cares? It has actually allowed me to now run some of my highest resolution cameras in Continuous mode (24/7 recording at your suggestion) and STILL my CPU usage remains incredibly low. I have now setup a Profile for several of my cameras to record 24/7 and switch to this when I leave my home. I have one off topic question related to this that I hope you can answer: I use Profiles but I do not want them to be started or stopped with a Schedule or timer. What menu choices would I have to make for my Profiles to be used manually? If you happen to know... and thanks again!

[@digiblurDIY]

I haven't played with profiles myself as I just let it eat on what it is set on as I didn't want something to get messed up or I forget something. Glad to hear the video helped out!

[@smky143]

This helped a lot, I run 11 cameras and lowering the live frame rate really helped. Thanks

[@digiblurDIY]

Glad it helped!

[@MrZamondo]

Best blue iris video out there! Hands down! I didn’t know about the sub streams! This feels like a whole new NVR! THANK YOU!

[@digiblurDIY]

Glad I could help!

[@UcantBeSerious03]

OMG - I've been using blue iris for a year and never tuned it - thanks man!

[@UcantBeSerious03]

do more blue iris!

[@digiblurDIY]

Definitely will!

[@UcantBeSerious03]

@@digiblurDIY I got 4TB drive - w/ 4k cameras - I'm still confused on how clips and archiving tab should be set-> New Stored and Alerts days / hrs etc

[@digiblurDIY]

Do you have any set as continuous recording?

[@UcantBeSerious03]

@@digiblurDIY all 4 are on continuous. I have the Laview saturn cams 4k 8mp. Same as the amcrest one I think you have.

[@gwheel3502]

Wow, this was incredibly helpful. Thanks for posting and keeping it under 20 mins. I’ll be following along now!

[@digiblurDIY]

That time limit is a difficult one for me. Ha! 2x speed and chapters work well.

[@gwheel3502]

Just had to rewatch as my BI computer was back up at 90-100% cpu usage and hadn’t changed a thing! 2 cameras weren’t set to the default encoding, changed em and back down under 50….thanks again for this vid, best one still!

[@digiblurDIY]

It is on my list for a new update! Thanks

[@agglad2230]

After watching this video, my system went from 97% to 25% with no impact on the actual quality new recording BlueIris does. I have 12 cameras on Ryzen 7 1800x, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD for Windows OS and another 1TB SSD as main drive for BlueIris. Furthermore, offloading stored videos to 2x8GB WesternDigital. So i just wanted to say thank you for this video guide.

[@digiblurDIY]

Thanks for sharing the results! Always nice to hear it makes a difference.

[@Oddish08]

Man.. those sub streams.. I've been running blueiris for years with 100% cpu + 50% utilisation on a gtx1070.. this jst dropped it to 3%.. insane!! Thank yoU!

[@digiblurDIY]

you CPU and GPU heatsinks will love you! :)

[@Oddish08]

@@digiblurDIY & my power bill :D

[@brianjensen2923]

Awesome help, went from 28% down to 12%!

[@12monkeys29]

Excellent video thank you! I have been wanting to add the dual video profiles since upgrading from v4 to 5v back in November but didn't know where to start! After adding some of your tweaks my i7 with 13 cameras is purring along with 18%-22%. More videos on Blue Iris would be great! Thanx again!

[@tylerpischl4698]

As usual, your videos are the best! Nice and easy to understand, even easier to implement.

[@digiblurDIY]

Glad to hear that!

[@D-vid]

That was a great video. Very clear explanation as always! I'm just starting out with Blue Iris with 4 Annke 4k cams on an old desktop. I'd love to see more videos on the topic.

[@digiblurDIY]

Glad it was helpful!

[@richardrussell791]

Great video! If you select "Limit decoding unless required" as suggested, the program will reduce the live preview decoding of all cameras except for the one you last clicked on. This makes all the live streams look very stuttery except for one that is smooth. Caused me a bit of head scratching when I set that parameter on all my cams.

[@digiblurDIY]

I have it set on mine and haven't had any stuttering. I did in some earlier versions of the substream addition but they seemed to have fixed the issue. Of course all the various mixtures of various equipment can vary and cause issues.

[@guyaldrich5878]

I like the weather overlay for blue iris being I am a weather geek !

[@MrZamondo]

And the trick with the reolink cameras and the 8999 to 8000. THANK YOU SO MUCH

[@brandonrippeonphoto]

Great video, I was ready to ditch BI, was able to get my CPU from 90% down to around 10%

[@digiblurDIY]

Great! Massive difference there and power savings as well.

[@quaternion-pi]

Great video. I struggled on how to change the on my Reolink cameras. I won't be buying any more of them because they lack that capability. I read the entire 200+ page BI manual and still picked up several important tips. Thanks!

[@digiblurDIY]

I'm not sure why they don't expose that but they are a cheaper camera. The manual on BI is actually pretty good I find.

[@ceser33]

Loving it!! Thank you so much!

[@biggerterry]

Incredible improvement. With these tips my CPU is below 20% and my system is extremely responsive.

[@digiblurDIY]

Awesome! Glad to hear that.

[@biggerterry]

I have eleven cameras. They are all now running CONTINUOUS. What is most amazing is that I can click on my iPhone and immediately get the camera display, populated with images. In the past this was extremely sluggish. If I click on an alert I can scroll through the footage very quickly with no lag. I am overwhelmed with the improvement and efficiency.

[@salemboatingclubclub3432]

One of the best BI videos I've seen yet. Thank you!!!! Quick question - what version of BI are you running? We currently use 5.3.3.16 and there's no pulldown for the substream, I have to manually enter the parameters in. Not a big deal. Our subscription ran out and I'm waiting to renew until some features that I really need/want are in before I worry about upgrading.

[@digiblurDIY]

I'm running 5.4 something now I believe the substream ONVIF query was added after that version. The integrated deepstack local object detection is pretty slick, no complicated around the world install of another couple apps.

[@tomroeder7348]

This is absolutely fantastic, thank you so much for this. I'm looking forward to more about BI!

[@margyjr]

Please, More Videos on Blue Iris, I have learnt so-much from this video, Thanks 😊

[@digiblurDIY]

Sure thing!

[@robertfarrer2615]

thanks much. I'd missed some things as well and my CPU rate was through the roof!

[@digiblurDIY]

Glad it helped!

[@normanpeterson694]

Thanks for a fantastic video. Learned a lot while getting my idle cpu down between 7 &24%. Please keep the videos coming

[@PJ-ee5mc]

This is a great video with lots of good up to date BI info. I recently did the sub-stream setup like yours and went from 98% CPU usage to under 25 % with 13 cameras in various configurations on an I7 processor. I'm a Mac guy but have the PC for BI and its a great setup. I have been using BI for years and love it but there are still some things that elude me: My motion settings to trigger any given camera seems unpredictable. I do not want to run cameras on 'full-time' but I also do not want to miss anything that enters the frame. The issue may be with Make time, Break time, etc. and some of those related setting. I wish I could find reliable settings for all of my cameras so that they will record for a given amount of time after the trigger and will re-trigger if need be without a long pause or downtime in between triggers. I need them to re-trigger quickly or what's the point? Yesterday the Fedex guy came and while reviewing the clip I saw him speaking with me at the front door for the 2 minutes that I had set it for. But then the recording stopped and it never re-triggered when he walked back to his truck and drove away. The camera caught nothing. I just can't seem to get this trigger setup to work predictably. A lot of people seem to have this same issue. Maybe you can do a video on this :) I'll keep my eye out. You do great work and you're a bright guy. Thanks again.

[@digiblurDIY]

Thanks! That has also been a little learning curve as well as BI measures the difference in pixels to determine things then it has that "cool down". There are quite a bit of settings there and it can drive you nuts trying to tweak it for every situation. For my base cameras I've switched to 24 hr recording as storage is pretty cheap these days. I'll make a note of this in my next Blue Iris video.

[@PJ-ee5mc]

@@digiblurDIY Now that my CPU usage is so minimal I think I too will go ahead and setup a couple of my most critical cameras for 24/7 and see how that goes. The only problem is that even though HD space is cheap, and I am recording to 3TB NAS drives, my recycle rate will be a much shorted period time before clips start to get recorded over. I'll give it a try and see how it goes. Thanks for the inspiration!

[@K0gashuk0]

I have definitly got to upgrade from 4 to 5. Currently, I am running Blueiris 4 on a Dell duel 6 core server. However, I am looking to merge some stuff together with virtualization. This would be the ticket along with a couple of cheaper Nvidia GPUs for plex and Blueiris acceleration.

[@hydrocurry6494]

also in Reolink camera setting turn on rtsp

[@Pabula]

Really nice video, i used to run blue iris, but found the cpu usage to be way to much for my liking, but with your tweaking seems you can drop lot of cpu cycles. Personally i moved to NxWitness, and im running 9x 4mp cameras on celeron J5005, idling at 20% usage.

[@BryanWood1]

Love the videos, always so very thorough. I have been using bi for several years now and currently have 12 cameras (only 3 are ReoLink 410 cameras). These settings have made great improvements. But I still have not been able to get AI Tool working. Some advice would be appreciated. Ty

[@digiblurDIY]

I do plan on some AI tool goodness as things are pretty simple here now.

[@BryanWood1]

I finally got it working, but I had install it on same windows10 machine. I would sure love to have working on virtual box hassio. I just can't figure out docker and portainer.

[@NadzNahid]

Great Tips👍 BlueIris is awesome love the huge bundle of features it offers. Only issue is the Android App feels buggy at times though the web interface on the other hand is great.

[@digiblurDIY]

Totally agree! The UI is pretty awesome but the Android app isn't that great.

[@DrSnuggles22]

ThNk you so much. This solved many problems of mine.

[@1monopoly21]

Amazing! Thanks so much!

[@digiblurDIY]

You're welcome!

[@macster1457]

Great video thank you.. What about the encoder setting that says "Resize output frame width x height: 1280 x 720 - what is this setting for?

[@digiblurDIY]

I don't think I've messed with that one before. Sounds like for a monitor?

[@n4mwd]

Good info. For comparison, exactly what model Celeron were you using for these tests? I'm trying to find out if an i5-1235u with 12 cores at 1.5ghz is better than an i5-11320h at 4.5ghz with only 8 cores. Which is better, cores or ghz?

[@digiblurDIY]

This was a Celeron G4900. A good comparison of raw cpu power is looking up the cpu passmark value to give you an idea.

[@n4mwd]

@@digiblurDIY Thanks. Passmark does say that the i5-11320 is a bit faster in raw computer power, but it is hard to judge when dealing with specialized software like blue iris. For example, my CPU has 8 threads, but only one GPU. So if I enable quick sync, it gets shared with all the cameras (16 in my case).

[@digiblurDIY]

Little different with the iGPU as it can do multiple streams. Same gpu in both chips?

[@n4mwd]

@@digiblurDIY I don't know much about them, but the 11320 has a newer GPU than the one you have. I remember "Iris" in the name. With your video I should be able to make it work.

[@digiblurDIY]

I'd probably roll with the 12th gen, they look to be both Iris graphics. Probably going to be better on power usage as well.

[@garysteo3398]

Yes to more BI, can you aim at the storage setup. how many days stored before deleting, things like that tks

[@digiblurDIY]

Good deal. I'll try to cover some of that stuff.

[@pavelivanov8264]

Wow, that's a gem content! Thank you so much

[@digiblurDIY]

Thank you!

[@RAC7012]

More BlueIris videos would be awesome!!!

[@digiblurDIY]

Awesome! Marking down a couple votes.

[@mrteausaable]

Hey, good choice of Camera and Software brand. I got both of the brands. But I am struggling to learn to use the BlueIris motion detection zones.. Do you know a quick a to rewind last 1 minute of the video when record continuously to see what happened? I do not need any triggers. I can do easily on the NVR but not sure in BlueIris.

[@digiblurDIY]

Make sure you are recording 24/7 then go to the clips.

[@mrteausaable]

@@digiblurDIY I did turn on continuous recording. Which clips Alert, Flagged? How to make clips of post 1 minute video? What setting do I need to do on the camera?

[@RACETOY101]

Yes! ...more videos...this one was great 👍

[@xrayhead]

WOW This helped me out BIG TIME :-)

[@digiblurDIY]

Glad to hear that!

[@jdabramson]

Thank you for this post. I shaved my CPU use in half.

[@adamfritzsche]

Great video as always. Are there any good resources for getting better motion detection out of BI? I am struggling with getting it to detect motion on some cameras (once I use the 640x480 sub for the motion) no matter how sensitive I put it.

[@carpii]

Great tips. If BlueIris is running as a service and I minimise the GUI to the tray, do you know if it has the same effect as pausing the streams with the GUI visible (ie, will it still reduce CPU usage)?

[@digiblurDIY]

Not really sure as I haven't tried that before. I bet it does though based on the GUI still having the same design aspect.

[@cleveclark8196]

Please do a Blue Iris Video on Schedules and Profiles!

[@nodave77]

Interesting, I thought the point of the i-frame was to help the camera with processing. Each individual i-frame is a completely new picture correct? And each FPS is just an update of the last i-frame right? So I thought you were supposed to put the i-frame at double the FPS rate to help reduce the amount of processing the camera has to do. I would love to learn more about this stuff.

[@digiblurDIY]

If the camera can do it then take advantage of the limit decoding feature.

[@jamegrabham9992]

Another good video Travis...thanks...I thought about installing BI on a Windows virtual machine, or a NUC7 Pentium mini, with 8 Gb DD4 ram and 500 GB SSD...my cameras are all Reolink...your thoughts???

[@digiblurDIY]

The big difference will be if you can get that video GPU offload going.

[@synapticaxon9303]

How did you get the labels on the imagery? I'm running DeepStack locally, I can turn on bounding boxes in the camera Trigger settings, I see the labels and probabilities in the clip annotations, but I haven't figured out how to get bounding box label percentage overlays in the video clips.

[@digiblurDIY]

I just have the defaults selected for DeepStack and it puts the boxes and labels.

[@synapticaxon9303]

@@digiblurDIY Just to be clear, you're getting bounding boxes and labels burned into the video clips? Or is it only in the JPEGs of the clips?

[@digiblurDIY]

Not aware of that option as it is direct to disk recording is what I use.

[@brownshome1]

9 cams from studdering 100% cpu to 15-22%. Memory 33% of previous values too. Thank You!

[@digiblurDIY]

Excellent!

[@dlpeters0n]

Quite helpful!

[@SyberPrepper]

Fantastic tips! Thanks.

[@digiblurDIY]

You are so welcome!

[@seba123321]

Thank you!

[@digiblurDIY]

You're welcome!

[@bcso1775]

All my sub-stream shows as an option is default. No choices. If I try to use default, how do I know what to put to the right of it? I checked the camera ip page and sub stream is on at 265

[@digiblurDIY]

Which camera is this?

[@iampyron22]

Whats it mean when your fps/key is at 0.50 for all cameras.

[@digiblurDIY]

That you can't use limit decoding.

[@iampyron22]

@@digiblurDIY ok sweet thanks there all reolink cameras so didnt think i could.

[@BryanWood1]

I need help with AI Tool

[@Pabz2030]

What matters: - Shutter speed - Pixel Density - Lens - good sensor for low light - Not a rolling shutter What doesnt matter (mostly): - FPS What cheap CCTV Cameras have: -High FPS -Poor shutter speed (and rolling shutters) -Terrible sensors for low light - Cheap lenses So cheap (and by cheap I mean under $500) CCTV cameras are great for a cheap home security setup to capture some blurry images of billy burglar and the local cats and to set off some alarms accordingly when a "person" or "cat" is detected in the image by AI. Forget doing meaningful facial recognition or ALPR with them. Explanation: Bit late but I work(ed) in professional security systems and the thing we rarely cared about was high FPS. Unless we were setting up cameras to capture very fast moving objects close too we would always run at 10FPS or less. For instance a car doing 60 mph is travelling at 26m/s so even perpendicular to a camera running at 5FPS a 60mph vehicle would still likely be seen on at least 5 frames. And coming towards or away will be in frame for many many seconds worth of footage, so we nearly always turned the FPS right down to preserve both bandwith and processing. What counts is not FPS but shutter speed. A low shutter speed will cause blur at any FPS. What you need is a high shutter speed camera (even at night - which needs a good lens and sensor), preferably at least 1/25th minimum for capturing people and 1/60th for vehicles at normal speeds. Most cheap CCTV cameras have awful shutter speed, especially at night - it's how they compensate for cheap sensors. You can improve this by using color illuminators for people detection and IR illuminators for ALPR..by lighting the scene brightly the camera will keep it's shutter speed up, but the cheap cameras still have a shutter lag and a rolling shutter - both very bad for detection. For detail for ALPR or facial recognition you need pixel density. So what counts is VERTICAL pixels per meter, or mm/pixel, at your chosen recognition range and ideally you want a camera/lens that will deliver about 3mm per pixel or better at whatever range from the camera you want to do facial recognition or ALPR and in a anamorphic aspect ratio. As a guide, a 2Mpix camera with a 6mm lens and a min low light shutter speed of 1/25th second will happily capture images for facial recognition and/or ALPR at a recognition range of about 15 feet running at 5FPS.

[@digiblurDIY]

Wow! Thanks for the detailed explanation

[@ronm6585]

Thank you. 👍👍👍

[@stevezb]

The video on blueirys app is low resolution much worse than on camera native app Is there a way to improve this?

[@digiblurDIY]

In the app settings you can change your Wan and lan encoder profiles.

[@rajilsaraswat9763]

Any love for Zoneminder?

[@digiblurDIY]

Do they support any of these features?

[@donjenkins2465]

Has anyone had any good luck using WD Purple Surveillance drives (yes I know there 5400 RPM and not recommended) Or WD RED NAS drives also 5400 RPM.. I will likely never have more than 6 cameras.

[@digiblurDIY]

Those are fine. No worries about the speed.

[@McCuneWindandSolar]

I get this a lot and its on a 10gb Netowrk so there is no way in hell it should be telling me your network connection is not fast enough to handle this stream in real-time

[@digiblurDIY]

It shows the CPU usage on the main GUI.

[@vernonland5987]

Changed my hardware decode to Intel and now Blue Iris crashes.

[@digiblurDIY]

Disable it, sounds like an older version or something incompatible with your iGPU

[@vernonland5987]

@@digiblurDIY Sorry for the snarky comment but this software is very frustrating. I spent three hours trying to get it to load after making that change. Now it starts but closes immediately making it impossible to change the setting back. I wish the people that wrote this P.O.S. software package would have done a better job of error trapping and messaging.

[@digiblurDIY]

All good. I haven't had or heard this issue before so I am not sure how to turn it off.

[@sodeepnext]

More offline Ai blue iris videos

[@nexes-forty-four2381]

first row ?

[@digiblurDIY]

Indeed!

[@tvaughnjr]

I tried your tips but did not help.

[@digiblurDIY]

OK. I guess your cameras and system aren't compatible.

[@lifepath7741]

Another video about this shit software...

[@digiblurDIY]

Yes