Anyone interested in running Blue Iris with 14 cameras on an i3 at 20% CPU usage?

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Anyone interested in running Blue Iris with 14 cameras on an i3 at 20% CPU usage?

Posted: 3/2/2018 9:41:11 PM EDT

After months of tinkering I finally figured it out.

Change the power mode from Balanced to High Performance.

Then change the Minimum CPU speed to 50% in the advanced options. Leave the maximum at 100%.

Bam! CPU usage reduces from 80% to 20% and the system is totally responsive now.

This is with a i3-4370 running Windows Server 2012. I have all cameras except one set to 1080P but all are at 10fps.

Direct to disk and all other optimizations have all been done and motion with zones and objects with highlighting is running.

The caveat is that instead of 12-14 watts of power it uses 20-24 watts now but it is worth every penny.

I'm so very happy about this discovery! What led me to it was that I installed Spiceworks Network Monitor tool for my switches so I turned SNMP on for the server and started watching it.

I kept getting warnings about the CPU Queue being high so I started messing around. It went from sometimes having 12 operations queued to a constant 0 with this change and runs like a top.

Posted: 3/2/2018 9:45:36 PM EDT

[#1]

One thing to note is that the Blue Iris mobile app can still take 100% CPU if outside your network to initially transcode everything (especially that damn all cameras view that I want to turn off but that doesn't seem possible....grrr), however, the usage drops down to 25% or so quickly.

Before it would crash the PC so I switched to Remote for Blue Iris which I do like but it doesn't support PTZ.

Posted: 3/2/2018 10:49:19 PM EDT

[#2]

If you need some more tweaks checks out ipcamtalk.com in case you haven't ventured over there yet. Plenty of good advice.

Posted: 3/3/2018 10:39:21 PM EDT

[#3]

Thanks for posting.

Posted: 3/5/2018 11:47:47 AM EDT

[#4]

No problem.

It has continued to work great over the weekend. I am getting some alerts from Network Monitor when Blue Iris is moving clips from the main storage array (2x6TB He6 drives in RAID 0) to the backup drive (8TB HGST He8) that disk activity is high but it only spikes at about 60MB/s which is fine for those drives so I need to adjust the alert settings in Network Monitor.

I am now very happy with my setup.

Posted: 3/11/2018 3:36:21 AM EDT

[#5]

Thank you for posting.

Posted: 4/15/2018 8:35:30 AM EDT

[#6]

Bumping in case others are trying to figure this out.

Posted: 4/15/2018 5:22:39 PM EDT

[#7]

I tried this on my i5 and it looks like CPU utilization is down around 10-20%.

Attached File

Sweet tip.

Posted: 4/15/2018 5:35:44 PM EDT

[#8]

Quote History

Quoted:
I tried this on my i5 and it looks like CPU utilization is down around 10-20%.

https://www.AR15.Com/media/mediaFiles/219829/confirmed-516216.JPG

Sweet tip.

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Cool, thanks for confirming my theory

Posted: 5/4/2018 11:10:12 AM EDT

[#9]

Good tip.

I remember viewing your Blue Iris screen in another thread, seeing the cpu utilization below 20% on an I3 with a bunch of cams - and thinking you were either running 1FPS or knew something I didn't.

It appears you indeed knew something I didn't.

With the power changes you suggested my 16 camera I7 2012 Server went from 70+% to about 15-30%. Most of my cams run 10-15FPS with audio. Maybe I'll bump up the FPS now on some, and add some other old cams back in.

Posted: 5/4/2018 11:42:08 AM EDT

[#10]

I'm glad you found it useful!

I spent a bunch of time trying to figure out what was going on as it confused me that whether I had 3 or 14 cameras on my system it was using the same 70% CPU usage so I started changing things until it went down.

The breakthrough came from installing Spiceworks Network Monitor and seeing the CPU Queue length warnings and then I started watching the CPU and noticed it wasn't running anywhere near full speed most of the time.

Posted: 6/20/2018 11:43:16 AM EDT

[#11]

Thought I'd bump this for newcomers.

Posted: 6/21/2018 10:03:50 PM EDT

[#12]

I know I wear out hard drives with BI in about 2 years. Will this accelerate the CPU taking a dump you think?

Posted: 6/25/2018 8:06:47 AM EDT

[#13]

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Quoted:
I know I wear out hard drives with BI in about 2 years. Will this accelerate the CPU taking a dump you think?

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Are you using AV rated drives or standard desktop/consumer drives?

As for the CPU, as long as your heat management is up to snuff, there should be no ill effects on your processor. Basically, make sure the cpu cooler and other fans / heat sinks are free of dust and nothing is blocking airflow into and out of the box.

Posted: 6/25/2018 9:43:38 AM EDT

[#14]

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Quoted:
I know I wear out hard drives with BI in about 2 years. Will this accelerate the CPU taking a dump you think?

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Quoted:
I know I wear out hard drives with BI in about 2 years. Will this accelerate the CPU taking a dump you think?

As far as HDD's go with Blue Iris it will depend on what you are doing. I don't use WD Purple drives, however, I do use Enterprise drives due to their higher URE and usage ratings. In my case I went with HGST Ultrastar drives since they have a 550TB/yr rating while most desktop drives will have under 150TB/Year. Even WD Red (not Pro) drives are only 180TB/yr which wasn't enough for my scenario when running 14 cameras on 2 drives.

Quoted:
Are you using AV rated drives or standard desktop/consumer drives?

As for the CPU, as long as your heat management is up to snuff, there should be no ill effects on your processor. Basically, make sure the cpu cooler and other fans / heat sinks are free of dust and nothing is blocking airflow into and out of the box.

Agreed. Heat kills CPU's so as long as the CPU is running cool it will be fine for a long, long time.

Posted: 6/25/2018 11:54:08 AM EDT

[#15]

thank you...

Posted: 8/16/2018 5:31:14 PM EDT

[#16]

I need to try this, even my 7th gen i7 chugs along with my setup. I have done everything recommended on ipcamtalk, so it is cool to find it here.

Posted: 8/16/2018 6:14:12 PM EDT

[#17]

why wont you use purple drives? thats what I have in my NVR and I am about to buy another for my NAS

Posted: 8/16/2018 6:27:04 PM EDT

[#18]

I need to upgrade my system and am interested in this.

How do you have all your cameras connected and what video card are you using and anything else that is important for building a system.

Posted: 8/16/2018 9:09:05 PM EDT

[#19]

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Quoted:
why wont you use purple drives? thats what I have in my NVR and I am about to buy another for my NAS

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I don't like that they only have a 300K head lift rating and a URE^14 while the Enterprise (WD Gold/WD Red Pro/HGST Ultrastar) drives have a 600K head lift rating and a URE^15. They also have a 5yr warranty instead of 3yr.

I run my surveillance PC with RAID 0 so I'd rather have the better drives for not much more money.

I'm not suggesting RAID 0 to everyone but for my setup it works fine.

Posted: 8/16/2018 10:14:03 PM EDT

[#20]

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Quoted:
I need to upgrade my system and am interested in this.

How do you have all your cameras connected and what video card are you using and anything else that is important for building a system.

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I just used a cheap Quadro for my setup since it is supported in Windows Server 2012 which I had to use for my ASRock Rack motherboard and I only needed a DVI or HDMI out.

As far as connecting the cameras mine are all IP based. I used POE+ rated switches (Cisco and Netgear) to power the cameras and used fiber optic between my shop and house with redundant uplinks between the switches. I went a little overboard though

If you want specifics let me know and I can type it all up.

Posted: 8/21/2018 5:32:20 PM EDT

[#21]

Any chance for some screen shots of those menu choices. Running windows 7 pro and blue iris 4.6.5.3 x64 and I don’t have any of the options you do...

Posted: 8/21/2018 5:50:23 PM EDT

[#22]

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Quoted:
Any chance for some screen shots of those menu choices. Running windows 7 pro and blue iris 4.6.5.3 x64 and I don’t have any of the options you do...

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I'll try to get some for you tonight after supper.

Just how to configure the power settings right? I have a Windows 7 Pro machine as well.

Posted: 8/22/2018 9:10:12 AM EDT

[#23]

Quote History

Quoted:
Any chance for some screen shots of those menu choices. Running windows 7 pro and blue iris 4.6.5.3 x64 and I don’t have any of the options you do...

View Quote

@lb6r

Sorry, I totally forgot with my water main troubles yesterday afternoon.

Choose Power Options as shown below and then click on the High Performance option.

Posted: 8/22/2018 6:42:00 PM EDT

[#24]

Ahh. Thanks I was looking in the blue iris options...

Posted: 8/22/2018 6:48:59 PM EDT

[#25]

I have mine running 13 cameras on my i7 x299 mb with only 17% cpu usage running mostly 20 to 30 FPS

Posted: 8/22/2018 7:01:43 PM EDT

[#26]

What cameras are you guys using? Specifically in the 1080p range?

Posted: 8/22/2018 7:56:29 PM EDT

[#27]

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Quoted:
What cameras are you guys using? Specifically in the 1080p range?

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I'm using:
Hikvision DS-2DE3304W-DE
Hikvision DS-2CD2132F-I

Posted: 8/22/2018 7:57:33 PM EDT

[#28]

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Quoted:
I have mine running 13 cameras on my i7 x299 mb with only 17% cpu usage running mostly 20 to 30 FPS

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That's not bad at all.

Posted: 8/22/2018 10:38:12 PM EDT

[#29]

Quote History

Quoted:
I'm using:
Hikvision DS-2DE3304W-DE
Hikvision DS-2CD2132F-I

View Quote View All Quotes

View All Quotes

Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
What cameras are you guys using? Specifically in the 1080p range?

I'm using:
Hikvision DS-2DE3304W-DE
Hikvision DS-2CD2132F-I

Thanks!!

Posted: 8/22/2018 10:41:02 PM EDT

[#30]

Quote History

Quoted:
Thanks!!

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Quote History

Quoted:

Quoted:
What cameras are you guys using? Specifically in the 1080p range?

I'm using:
Hikvision DS-2DE3304W-DE
Hikvision DS-2CD2132F-I

Thanks!!

No problem. I've been very happy with them.

Posted: 8/30/2018 5:54:11 PM EDT

[#31]

Thank you for posting this!

It's giving me some great answers & making me think of more questions.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Anyone interested in running Blue Iris with 14 cameras on an i3 at 20% CPU usage?

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