11 Blue Iris Tips for Awesome PC PERFORMANCE - Home Surveillance Software

💻💻 My PC Build:

Today, we are installing and optimizing the security surveillance management software Blue Iris. This software is resource intensive and without the proper configuration, your security camera system may experience errors, lost surveillance footage, crashes or even total failure. If you are new to Blue Iris, welcome because we are going to download the software, install it, buy a license, run through the initial setup steps and add some cameras. I will show you 11 performance tips to optimize the software to keep your PC running at its best.
For those of you who watch my channel know that I’m a big fan of the video monitoring and recording software Blue Iris. In the past, I’ve struggled first hand with the software’s performance issues, system crashes and coming home to lost footage, error messages and even the blue screen of death. With the latest version 5 and, a clean PC, and a handful of optimization tips, performance is about to change.
The PC that I will be using today was recently restored back to defaults. I also presented its spec in another video. Please check that out to become familiar with its hardware.
Since this video is about setting up Blue Iris and optimizing its performance, and in this video I define MY optimal performance. This is a subjective matter with many dependencies, like the PC hardware, other programs installed on the machine, number of cameras and resolution and even expectations of the software.
I walk through the steps of downloading and installing the software. I then purchase a license key to gain access to all the features.
Here is a list of the performance features and the additional setting I discuss.
1. Hard drive configuration - ensuring the computer has at least 1 SSD and a mechanical drive.
2. Postponing Windows updates so they don’t restart the PC unexpectedly. I also ensure the power setting don’t allow the machine to go to sleep.
3. File save locations are important. Ensure Blue Iris’s database is saved on an SSD. Also place New files on this drive. The archive or stored files can go on the slower WD purple drive.
4. Use direct to disc recording to eliminate re-encoding
5. Configure each camera and Blue Iris to record at 15 fps. Any more than this doesn’t provide much of an advantage and uses resources.
6. A global setting for FPS can reduce the frames shown on the display without impacting the recordings.
7. Use of the sub stream profiles will display each camera in lower resolution while continuing to record in full resolution.
8. Recording this sub stream helps in playing back multiple cameras’ footage at once since the resolution is lower.
9. Restricting the amount of data used by Remote Desktop also can bring down the CPU numbers by decreasing the refresh rate.
10. Intel’s quick sync video takes some of the load off of the CPU as well.
11. When using Blue Iris as a Windows Service, the user interface is not showing but the application continues to run in the background.
I also show the performance numbers when Blue Iris is moving around files. Lastly, I discuss my optimizations that I personally use.
Lot’s of great information with many examples!

[brucesalisbury]

CLEAR. CONCISE. TO THE POINT. This is how you make a video. No life story, no fluff. Just the right information presented to make it done right. I appreciate you, great job!

[edmurphy]

BEST BLUE IRIS VIDEO I'VE EVER SEEN! Dropped my CPU usage down from 60% to 27% AND set two of my six cameras to recording full time in 1 hour increments.

[stargazer]

I am a new Blue Iris user and just want to express my appreciation for your professional presentation. I have watched many videos on Blue Iris and yours, in my opinion, is hands down the best, very concise, to the point, and easy to understand. Thank you.

[Dentonboy]

Thanks for video. My server crashed and I had been using BI4 for 5 years or so. I installed BI5 yesterday and needed to update everything. The substream live view at 17:50 helped my cpu performance the most, but all of it was very useful!

[bjchandler]

Bought Blue Iris 4 a couple years ago. Just getting around to using it. Love your videos. I plan on upgrading to 5 plus adding upgraded support so using your link out of respect. I hope all understand how youtube works and remember to be patrons to those willing to teach and share.

[byronfollowell]

Excellent video for someone who has been using BI out-of-the-box, with no optimizations for a couple of years. I had three cameras inside my home and wanted to add four new POE cameras outside. When I first checked, I was running around 40% CPU utilization with the three inside cameras. After making it through only about half of your optimizations I'm already down to under 10%. That's a huge increase. I plan to work through the rest of them as well, then set my new cameras up the same way. Thank you!

[onlygoodneighbors]

This video was IMMENSELY helpful in getting utilization under control. Thanks for posting.

[X-FX]

Synology convert here.
Loving Blue Iris and found your videos very concise and to the point.
Thank you so much.

[talesmaschio]

I'm new to BI (experienced Digifort user) and this video helped me a lot to tweak my settings. Thank you!

[mrblacktrh]

Excellent video for a noob like me! I look forward to your next video on the subject. ❤️

[buckmasters]

Great video! I appreciate you making it to help us all understand more how Blue Iris works.

[Nascup]

best youtube for blue iris, thank you very much and I hope you continue to make more blue iris videos.

[petershortland]

This video has the best configuration tips I have found for Blue Iris. Following the guidance, my cpu usage has dropped from 70-80% to around 20% and the system is much more responsive

[surfingnoid]

Fantastic and thank you for this! Every setting you went over should be the default.

[EsotericArctos]

I run Blue Iris on a Windows 10 PC. I added a registry patch that stops the computer automatically rebooting after updates and I just login once a month to do a reboot. I also run Home Assistant in a Virtual Box VM on the same machine so I could not have it rebooting itself randomly. It's been absolutely rock solid for the past 2 years I have been running in this configuration with the registry patch.
I generally use UI3 (The web interface) when monitoring and scrubbing time lines. The CPU utilisation is lower to stream to UI3 than having the main interface open on a remote machine

[dony]

hi, you saved my BI subscription, i was already think to trash all my cams and buy a physical DVR combo, i have 22 HD cams (indoor and outdor), and CPU was always "120" or higher (100%), just using yout tip about the substreams went down to 25-30%,

[biggerterry]

Thank you for a well produced video. Very clear and understandable with great graphics and illustrations of concepts. No fluff, all useful information. You are one of the 2% who produce truly useful technical videos.

[flyme-zb]

Your videos are always so helpful but I still have a question that so many users would like to find an answer to: I am ashamed to admit that after so many years of using B.I. and managing a rather complex system of 16 cameras I still manage to 'miss the action' more often than I would like to admit. While I know that the simple answer is to record 24/7 I can only do this practically on just 2 of my cameras and the rest must rely on motion activation. I simply cannot seem to find the right combination of Make Time, Break Time, Re-trigger, etc. that will not still leave gapping holes in my coverage.

For example: Let's say that I would like to have my camera record for 60 seconds after a trigger and then stop (unless it is re-triggered during those 60 seconds) in which case it will continue to record until the action stops. After it stops I need to know that it will begin to record again IMMEDIATELY upon the next trigger. It seems that the 'second time around never' happens soon enough and I miss that next event. As I read in someone's post with the this same question: "The UPS guy walks up the driveway and is recorded doing so. As he goes around to the back door and out of sight the recording stops. When he then returns down the same path (all of which is set for motion trigger) he is not recorded at all. Why?" I would be so grateful if you or someone here could shed some light on this for those of us who haven't been able to get to the bottom of this. Thanks for all of the great videos you make. You have helped me out a lot.

[Bayhuntr]

Do you know where after the camera set up you can set it for records directly to disk? It’s probably right in front of me, but I have not been able to find it. Thanks!

[donpham]

Thank you for your video. How can I make arrangement for each camera on the screen. Especially, I would like to select a certain camera for the main screen. Thank you.