Sluggish live video
I recently upgraded to a Mac Studio and an OWC Thunderbay 8 external enclosure with some drives I had, but also 4 WD Red Plus 12 TB (7200RPM) in RAID 5 that I bought specifically to house media.
Since then, SecuritySpy has been stuttering locally and remotely when viewing live video. It looks like maybe 2-3 frames a second, despite it being set to 20-30, depending on the camera.
if I view the feed directly from one of the cameras, it seems like the video is more in line with it’s settings of 20-30 frames per second.
For what it’s worth; I’m seeing stuttering with Plex being served from the same array, as well.
Since the internet setup hasn’t changed, I’m wondering if it’s the read/write speeds either from the drives themselves or from the enclosure.
I can’t imagine it’s the computer itself since I went from a 2013 Mac Pro to a 2022 Mac Studio.
Any advice on what to test or how to see if it’s the drives or the enclosure? Or maybe even the RAID setup?
The array reading and writing video captures is RAID 5, and Blackmagic speed test shows 320MB/s read and 370MB/s for write (which looks marginally faster than almost any standard alone external drive I can find.)
Any pointers on what to test would be appreciated.
Comments
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One other weird thing; when SecuritySpy boots, it spends a long time “looking for capture storage” (I think that’s the language)
I eventually have to hit Escape to get it to finish loading.
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The first thing to do is to install the latest beta version of SecuritySpy, as this has some optimisations for the new Mac Studio.
Next, under Preferences > General, click the "Customise" button next to the "Show camera information" option, and make sure both the "Incoming frame rate" option and the "Display frame rate" options are selected. With both selected, you will see two frame rate numbers in video windows: the first is the rate at which frames are being received from the camera, and the second is the rate at which frames are being decoded and displayed. If the numbers are equal and both low, this indicates a potential network issue, but if the first number is high and the second number is low, this indicates a problem with video decoding. Please let me know what you find.
The speed of the drives should not have any effect on the frame rate of the live video display.
As for the disk issue on startup, this indicates that there is a custom capture destination set that can't be found. Check the capture destinations that have been set under Preferences > Storage and Preferences > Cameras > Setup for each camera to make sure they are all valid.
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Just grabbed the beta version.
3 of my 4 outdoor cameras are reporting 15/9 or 15/8 for frame rate. What should I muck with for the settings for those cameras?
The indoor cameras are 15/15 for the most part.
I managed to fix the capture destination issue, thanks for that.
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Can you confirm that you have the option to "Display cameras at half frame rate" in the General Preferences turned off?
Assuming so, then this sounds like a video decoding issue. Please can you enable all columns in the Camera Info window (click the header bar where you see the column names to add/remove columns) and then take a screenshot of this window (command-shift-4, space, click on window) and then post the screenshot here.
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"Display cameras at half frame rate" is turned off.
Here's what I see in the Camera Info windows for the affected cameras:
The ones that are problematic are: Front Door, Driveway, Backyard, and Patio & Spa. Happy to try adjusting any settings you think might help!
