64-bit

jlbrown
jlbrown
edited April 2015 in SecuritySpy
I know this was asked last year, but has there been any progress on making SecuritySpy 64-bit?

Had a few camera switch to Passive due to 'out of memory' errors.

Running SS 3.4.4 on Mac Mini (late 2012) running 10.10.3 with 16GB of RAM.

Thanks,

James.

Comments

  • Ben
    Ben
    Hi James,

    Yes, this is being actively worked on, however it's a big job. Fortunately in most cases SecuritySpy is CPU-bound rather than memory-bound so this doesn't affect many users. If you are running out of memory, you could try reducing the pre-capture times for your cameras, and make sure that your Mac isn't doing any software video compression but rather is saving the already-compressed video directly from the camera to disk, as described in the Optimising Performance section of the user manual.
  • jlbrown
    jlbrown
    Hi Ben.

    Any progress on this?

    Still getting frequent out-of-memory errors:

    "There was an error while running the camera "Pallet Racking East" in active mode - it has been set to passive mode (Error code: 22120,-108 Out of memory)

    There was an error while running the camera "1st Floor" in active mode - it has been set to passive mode (Error code: 22120,-108 Out of memory)

    There was an error while running the camera "Packing Room" in active mode - it has been set to passive mode (Error code: 22120,-108 Out of memory)"

    (BTW, should be able to Copy text in the SecuritySpy Errors window.)

    Have turned frame rate down to 10 on all the cameras, text overlay is done at camera, etc. Turned off audio sending from cameras.

    Running El Capitan 10.11.1, 16GB of RAM.

    Thanks,

    James.
  • Ben
    Ben
    Hi James,

    We're still working on this, however meanwhile we should be able to advise some settings changes that will reduce your memory usage and eliminate these messages. So that we can go over your settings, open SecuritySpy and press the space bar three times in a row; a file called "SecuritySpy Debug Info" will appear on your desktop - please email it to us.
  • quinkink
    quinkink
    I can report I run SS with 16 cameras at 1280x720 15fps on only 8GB RAM for years and never had a problem. The Mac is not even a dedicated machine. It is my desktop running routine office apps. SS seems to be very memory efficient.
  • jlbrown
    jlbrown
    OK. Have emailed the debug file to you. Thanks Ben.

    James.
  • ibnahmed
    ibnahmed
    I currently have a 11 camera system. I ran previously on an iMac as a try and cpu limitation became an issue. I reduced my cameras to HD720 and 15fps constant bit rates. This is with mpeg-4 encoding. No chance to get H.264 encoding.
    I now got a mac pro and cpu power is not an issue. However, i was struck by the memory limitation. I noticed that SS cannot use the whole of my 16GB ram installed.
    Basically, if i change to H.264 compression and try to record more than 3 cameras (at the same time) one camera goes to passive mode (if not SS crashes and recrashes during startup). For testing, i have made pre-times to zero but still i cannot record more than 3 cameras simultanuously.

    I am waiting for the 64 bit version.
  • Ben
    Ben
    Hi @ibnahmed thanks for the feedback - under the current compression framework that SecuritySpy uses (QuickTime), H.264 compression uses vast amounts of memory, so for multiple high-resolution cameras it's not practical to use the Mac to do this in software. Fortunately these days most cameras can provide H.264 video and SecuritySpy can record this directly to disk, which gives you the lowest CPU and memory usage with the highest quality, so it's almost always the best thing to do.

    However we do understand that there are situations in which an efficient software H.264 encoding option is useful, and we are working on solutions for this right now.
  • ibnahmed
    ibnahmed
    Thanks Ben
    I actually have all my cameras capable of h.264 video out.
    When i was trying to record without compression i always ended with big file size.
    I left the option of "no compression of data from this device as on" however the file size was big. I expect the type of stream coming from camera is configured in the camera and not in SS. Am i right?
  • Ben
    Ben
    There are a few things to check to make sure that SecuritySpy is able to capture the H.264 video data directly from camera to disk, including turning off text overlays in SecuritySpy (use the cameras' own text overlays instead) - this is outlined in the Optimising Performance section of the user manual. If you've done this and are still seeing unusual file sizes, we can have a look over your settings to see what could be going wrong. To allow us to do this, open SecuritySpy and press the space bar three times in a row. A file called "SecuritySpy Debug File" will appear on your desktop - please email it to us referencing this forum thread and we'll take a look.

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