Subscriber Discussion

Milestone Client Problems With Displaying Full HD Cameras

GG
Greg Guzzetta
Apr 14, 2014

We do some specialized surveillance that requires us to provide full HD images from cameras running at high bit rates, served up at the local client. We have been using Exacqvision but recently switched to Milestone for various reasons... we are having serious issues running the cameras at decent bit rates or frame rates. The client response becomes seriously sluggish. Smart client quickly consumes at least 95% of the processors as soon as we bring up 8 cameras on our two 50" monitors. It seems to me that the Milestone client is doing far more work then the Exacqvision client...

We ran all of our cameras on "11"... (Spinal Tap reference)... including 30fps and easily ran this on Exacqvision.

We run between 12 and 25 Sony SNC EP580 cameras on a system at a time, set up at Full HD and full bitrate and 30fps. We were not able to come close to that on our last project using Milestone.

I would appreciate any thoughts on:

A. Is there anything that can be done with hardware or software set up to help this Milestone issue?

B. Does anyone understand why there would be such a difference in performance of the clients... Exacq vs Milestone?

Thanks!

DM
Duncan Miller
Apr 15, 2014

When we tested several different VMS platforms this was usually the case. Exacq was the only platform we found that wasn't a resource hog while viewing multiple HD cameras. Unfortunately for you if you are using milestone the only solution you have is to build an insanely fast box to run it, use low quality camera video streams or switch video compression from H.264 to MJPEG.

As for why Exacq is able to run more efficiently then milstone its is simple. Exacq was build from the ground up without using developer resources like Microsoft .net or direct x. Using developer resources allows companies to get to market quick but unfortunately when software is written using these resources you end up with bloat ware. Software with all sorts of extra dependencies that aren’t fully used. Thats why the exacq client install is 25MB in size and the milestone smart client is 220MB. Thats a whole lot of extra code running in the background and loaded into memory.

GG
Greg Guzzetta
Apr 15, 2014

Very interesting... thanks for that insight.

U
Undisclosed #1
Apr 15, 2014

Why are you running at "full hd" to the client? Presumably by that you mean 1080p, which is also likely the resolution of your monitors, meaning that you're displaying a lot less than 1080p by having 4 cameras up on 1 screen. However, you're still moving all that data through the network and to the client. Can you setup the client to view a lower-res camera stream, while still possibly recording 1080p?

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Greg Guzzetta
Apr 15, 2014

The type of specialized work work that we do requires us to be able to view 1080p streams.

U
Undisclosed #1
Apr 15, 2014

But you're not viewing 1080p if you've got cameras 4-up on a screen.

GG
Greg Guzzetta
Apr 15, 2014

When we select the camera to full screen we do... we need the resolution whether we are looking at it in a four box or full screen.

TF
Tiago Fioreze
Apr 16, 2014

I'm with Undisclosed A Manufacturer on this one. Your viewer is requesting 4 FHD streams from the IP network to be decoded and displayed in a 2x2 layout on a FHD monitor. Consequently, you are decoding 4 FHD video streams to be displayed each in a qHD (one quarter of a Full HD) pane. It is just a waste of bandwidth and CPU processing.

You could use multistreaming to help you here. Your viewer could request qHD streams from the IP network while the viewer is at 2x2 layout and when fullscreen mode is chosen, then the viewer would request the respective FHD stream from the network.

BE
Brian Elias
Apr 15, 2014

Just to give a point of comparison, here are some findings when using Milestone with 4 streams configured as follows:

Stream 1: Axis Q6035-E 1080p, H.264, 15 fps, comp. 35

Stream 2: Axis P3367 5MP (running in 3MP mode), H.264, 10 fps, comp. 30

Stream 3 and 4: Axis P3364 720p, H.264, 15 fps, comp. 30

- Only workstations running a Core i5 or better are able to display all 4 streams on SmartClient without causing a significant slow-down

- Anything with less than a Core i5 requires a different Milestone view configured for down-sampling (image quality set to "Super-High" or "High")

- Upgrading RAM / video card does not seem to change performance, only CPU

- Even on a Core i7, I still get ~ 1/3 CPU usage across all cores, but there is little noticeable overall slow-down

- Try setting "Maximum Decoding Threads" to Auto (in SmartClient Options --> Advanced)

PS
Philip Schaadt
Apr 15, 2014

FWIW I have Milestone running on and Intel i7 3960x hex core (a leftover machine I had). I tested 16, 3 mp cameras running and ended up with close to 90% CPU but no slowdown. I also have a completely dedicated network to the cameras.

Wth a sub stream of 704x480 (which ic what I use) CPU bounces around 20%.

"Maximum Decoding Threads" is set to Auto

Phil Schaadt

TF
Tiago Fioreze
Apr 16, 2014

16 x 3MP H.264 video streams? Now that's an achievement.

What is the quantisation level and bitrate of these streams?

GG
Greg Guzzetta
Apr 16, 2014

Don't know about quantisation level... don't know what that is... but when we were running Exacq we were running 8k bit rate... we are down to 2k in Milestone.

TF
Tiago Fioreze
Apr 17, 2014

Do Exacq and Milestone request 3MP video streams from the IP cameras with the same frame rate?

Quantisation level can also be understood as compression level.

Avatar
Brian Rhodes
Apr 16, 2014
IPVMU Certified

Here are some questions:

1) Are you using camera side / server side motion detection?

2) Are you running the Smart Client from the same box you're recording to?

3) What is an example bitrate for one camera in your setup?

4) Which CODEC are you using? H.264? MJPEG?

GG
Greg Guzzetta
Apr 16, 2014

1) no motion detection enabled on either side.

2)Seperate server / client

3)We have been forced to reduce bit rate to 1-2k... which is a real bummer for us.

4) H.264

PS
Philip Schaadt
Apr 16, 2014

A high performance i7 machine with add in NICs will cost about the same one of your Sony SNC EP580 cameras. You can likely borrow a high end i7 and try it.

Phil Schaadt

PS
Philip Schaadt
Apr 16, 2014

http://www.milestonesys.com/SharePoint/XProtectOverview/Product%20Related%20Graphics/Milestone_XProtect_Comparison_Chart.pdf

Milestone only supports multi-live streaming in the corporate edition.

Phil Schaadt

PS
Philip Schaadt
Apr 16, 2014

Right now when I reset to 2048 x 1536 live and watch the lawn crew trim the shrubbery it is just under about 5 Mbit per sec. These are Hivision bullets so they are only 20 fps. I use 4 Tycon outdoor GigE PoE switches at the corners of the property. Each of the four go back on a dedicated outdoor CAT5 to the server which has multi-NICs (We are an IT company and I just had the i7 system around from a previous project).

I record full resolution on 22 camera. I normally live-view them all at 740x480 onto two 30 inch screens. I got about the same CPU load when I viewed the full streams in 16 browser windows. Since I'm not a professional IPVM integrator I never really did the formal measurements I would do for an IT integration project plus the machine was already in our integration lab so these are FWIW level comments.

Phil Schaadt

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Mike Dotson
Apr 17, 2014
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

I test VMS Clients in our lab so that we can give a realistic quote to our customers.

The posts by Phil and Brian are very close to what I see in the lab.

The SmartClient is HIGHLY CPU centric ... and I saw that going as high as Dual E5 Xeons did NOT prove worth the cost. Go for a maximun I7 proc instead as Phil had mentioned.

Another thing to beware of is the interaction of the Client and Server. If you have defined an Image Quality setting of ANYTHING other than 'Full' this note in the manual applies....

While using a reduced image quality helps limit bandwidth use, it will—due to the need for re-encoding images—use additional resources on the surveillance system server.

This means that part of you issue could in fact be on the server side.

If your Viewstation has enough memory, you can play with the Video Buffering settings to help smooth out the image.

PS
Philip Schaadt
Apr 17, 2014

re-encoding images—use additional resources on the surveillance system server.

Thank you for confirming my suspiscions. for regular operation I set the substream resolution on the camera and the setting for substream resolution on Xprotect to be identical and it cuts down the trans-coding processor load.

With single socket i7 processors at 8 cores as of about August, hi resolution streams won't be an issue. HOWEVER, my biggest complaint with Milestone is that the internals to maintain connection to the cameras over the network are extremely sensitive to any minor network glitch. Looking at detailed network stats did not show anything from an IT network perspective but I would loose connection. As described above, with the dedicated, isolated multiple 1GigE to 10 GigE NICS all of my Hikvsion cameras have been reliably connected.

Phil Schaadt

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Mike Dotson
Apr 17, 2014
Formerly of Seneca • IPVMU Certified

Phil,

To complete the Client interaction story...there is also the Web based Client function getting feed from The Web Server function.

What happens with this function is that the cameras are ALL transcoded (to MJPEG) by the system where the Web Server code is running.... and if you have anythng more than 10 defined cameras in your system, you should really consider a super beefy CPU to handle this. A good option is to install this function on its own system.... that way it will not affect the Recorder function performance.

PS
Philip Schaadt
Apr 18, 2014

Mike, thank you very much for the helpful tips. Because the nature of our systems integration business, all our Windows machines are i7 quad or hex cores with at least eight gig of memory even our Ultrabooks have dual core i7 processors.

Just because of the set up around here we have not been using the web client and the smart client at the same time but I will take your advice when I get a little time and move the display servers to their own dedicated machines.

Phil Schaadt

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