Is the Synology Surveillance Station better than Blue Iris?

What I wish a company like Blue Iris will do is this. Create software that will not need a operating system to be used, were you by it and it has its own OS so its the only thing running when booted that way you don't have to worry about windows ect. but I have it running good and love it.

I have one question.
Should I get an NVR1218 or an DS218? I have 2 IP cameras...
Whats the best option?

You should try NxWintess, i was a blue iris user for 5 years, and i still think its a great software specially for what it costs. But to me NxWitness simply is what i wanted, not only it runs on ubuntu, but also its very light on the cpu, im running 8x 1080p hikvision camaeras on an Celeron J5005, recording 100% of the time with 1080p on motion and 480 on the rest of time, and the CPU hangs at 20% cpu usage, even with multiple clients connected scrubbing through recordings it never past 90% cpu, something that Blue Iris could do with a heavy cpu, but this is done with a very low end cpu. Talking about Scrubbing thru recordings, they have something called smart scrubbing where you can highlight a certain area and it will search your through all the recordings, its really amazing, and my goal was more in line to make a 24/7 server use less electricity, with blue iris i used to hang around 65W on i7 4770k with peaks around 120W, now with the J5005 i hang around 15W operational and peaks around 22W, its a lot more efficient software. If you are interested they have free trial on the their webapage that will allow you to test 4 cameras, but you can email them for extra temporal licences for your month trial, to me its the best NVR software i have tested, but we all have different needs and priorities.

I use blue iris. I bought the license one year but you honestly never need it again.

does blue iris support face recognition?

I've always paid ONE TIME for blue iris, No idea what you're talking about.

When I see Synology anything my first thoughts are over priced. However, this is still a great video.

I recommend and use a dedicated IP camera recorder They are cheaper way than a PC, designed with enough horsepower to decode high end cameras, have a built in POE switch witch will take the traffic off of your network and the big one here....... NO License fees!

Many words and no movie

BlueIris hands down

I've played with both Synology Station and Blue Iris, and as far as I'm concerned Blue Iris is the hands-down winner in almost every category. Cost and ease-of-use are factors, to be sure, but functionality is what it's all about in the end, and Blue Iris is way beyond Synology Station in that respect.

I've had a Synology 1218NVR for 3 years now. I think this review is accurate, however, the motion detection is TERRIBLE for anything outside. I have experience in Machine Vision, and I cannot get the settings right to get less than 50 false triggers a day and still detect my dog. Shadows from Clouds and leaves, rain drops, bugs (especially at night with IR). They need to allow you to use a recorded video to run your settings against it. As it is, you have to have live person out there, which doesnt work to test daytime and night time. Also they don't allow for close up, vs longer distance settings which occurs with elevated cameras at angles.

Another downfall of the software, is it does NOT downsize videos for playback. So if you are recording at 1080p or higher, you will need fast internet connection to view the video on your phone.

How feasible is it to feed the video stream from an existing 4-camera NVR into the Synology NAS's Surveillance Station? Would that count as 1 camera or 4?

I have a relatively powerful computer which I can leave on all the time (core i7, 64 GB RAM, 1GB GPU). I wish to have 8 security cameras. Can I just install Blue iris on my computer and use it as a server as well? Or I need to buy a dedicated server for the cameras? Thanks for great content

Fricking ridiculous that companies like this artificially hobble their software with per camera licences

thanks for letting me know where you live and where your camera's are.

Question on Blue Iris. Is there a big benefit to running a dedicated GPU? I have an HP DL160 G6 with 6TB of drive space I was going to use for running Blue Iris. But it doesnt have a standalone GPU.

Price of purchasing the NAS would also have to be taken into account. Is the power draw of the Synology much less than a PC given it is basically a computer, running an Intel Celeton with 8GB RAM?. What resolution are your cameras? That makes a huge difference. You could run 10 plus 2.1megpixel cameras on a sub 200 PC in Blue Iris. What are updates like with the NAS?
Edit: Blue Iris can be a once cost as the cost is only to pay for upgrades, the software will run forever in the version you have even if you don't pay for it a second time.

How would the DS1019+ perform while running Surveillance Station & Plex at the same time?

FYI you missed another strength of the Synology solution: scalability. Rather than try to upgrade the NAS to expand, you can buy another NAS and add your new cameras to that, and access both from the same login (basically one station will act as a master). So when your performance degrades from more cameras, add a second NAS and put the new cameras on that. Save the local high res vid, but stream lower res thumbs to the master for live view monitoring. You can also set up zones with seperate NAS and trunk them together.
Another thing, I use the secondary RJ45 for the camera POE network, primary RJ45 for data network, keeping camera traffic off the data network unless I'm directly viewing it on my device.
100% on your thoughts about scrubbing with synology, though. Weakest feature in the whole package, imo.

Have you (or anyone here) tried to see how the performance is like when using the NAS for both surveillance and Plex functions simultaneously?

Hmm I got the HP laptop Elitebook 16 inch, i7 quadcore, decent Intel HD, $200 + Blueiris license , hooked in USB3 HD 1TB,,,record all the day long!

Remote access, easy,,,DDNS -> my wifi router -> RDP access special port number -> onto the Laptop desktop ! :)

You need to try this again now that they (Blue Iris) use's sub-streams, CPU has dropped ten fold.

Whered you buy the mario picture from in the background?

just get a business class pc , HP or dell off ebay for around 300 bucks that comes with win10

Can't you just virtualize BI on your NAS?

How does all this compare to an NVR? as I scroll down I see 90% of questions have no answers.

I will say that the synology surveillance station is pretty good. Its really nice to have a box that does it all for you. IF you pair this with the right cameras (Dahua with IVS) you can get very good notifications with minimal false alarms and have it all managed by 1 small box vs a big machine. The per camera license is a little annoying but I think its worth it and they transfer forward if you upgrade to a new model etc. To me its a convenience fee that's worth it. If you already have a dedicated machine / server and you want to have it handle your security, you're already half way there. I like to separate concerns so having a dedicated security / storage box is better for me.

i didn't hear power usage mentioned much? The OP has fast cpu and a dedicated gpu running blue iris - will be a lot more power usage than a NAS.
If you run it 24/7 that extra cost in electricity could add up pretty fast

What do you think about using Blue Iris and using the Synology NAS strictly for storage? Would that be problematic?

is it worth it on the ds220j? that thing only has 512meg of ram

If you're going to compare event finding in Surveillance Station to that in Blue Iris -- and say that BI is better -- it would be helpful if you actually showed how it's better. Also, you didn't mention false triggers due to racing clouds, wind, etc. Which is better there? That is perhaps the biggest discriminator.

Isn't Blue Iris only $60 for the Full version, it's not a yearly subscription... or did they change it?

Yes, i just needed 4 more cameras licenses, but paying 200€??? After the investment on my DS920+ and HDD's?
It's ridiculous

most people I know dont have any cameras - if they had 1 its a huge deal. Im gonna venture to say most people who do take the plunge will never have more than 1 or 2 maybe 3 MAX! so the Synology is plenty- Also its cool to have it all in one place in the Synology ecosystem

5960x was a good CPU back in the day. I ran a 5930k for 6 years. X99 was solid.

Thi is for geo Vision ?

I work for a CCTV company I can say from experience with a few servers I am talking about the rs1619xs+ rs3621xs+ rs820.
The viewing stations really needs to be powerful unlike any other system DW Spectrum etc….
And on the phone it takes long to load H265 and H265+ forget about.

I am using Hik-Visions cameras

They want how much for that unintuitive software?!

I was watching this again. I have just been given a DS918+ for free, so now considering if it is worth running a computer 24/7.
I played with Surveillance Station, but one thing really annoys me. SS seems to change the camera settings so messes up the feed to BI while I am testing.
Question: How do you stop SS from messing with the camera settings?

Yes. In every way. Blue Iris is junk.

from experience, i loved my synology system. the biggest downfall of the system are the required camera licenses.. expensive and personally a ridiculous way for them to make more money. after spending the chunk of cash for the unit itself.. I'm in the process of setting up a blue iris box on an i7 pc and it will cost roughly half of what the synology setup w/4 cams did and support more cams without additional cost.

What about the cpu usage? - With Blue Iris you have to use sub stream in order to lower the cpu usage, if not, then you could miss motions.. Blue Iris is a cpu hog.

Intel nuc or smilar tomb pc and any hdd you wanted x10 faster 1/4 price no backdoor to someone watch your ass at least. For camera anything i use zmodo. My seagate dock and 4x1tb ssd attached usb c is same time home cloud server also. Fuk those who ask monthly bla bla bla. Robbery must be forbidden asap it is apple style robbing and anyone copy that shit.

I was disappointed with the review. Your heading said "Is the Synology Surveillance Station better than Blue Iris?" both of which are software and yet most of the review was on hardware. Speaking of hardware you missed comparing motion detection with is very hardware performance dependent. Also you spent very little time on Blue Iris software. The review left me with little knowledge on either software and a desire to look at other reviews.

I have been using Blue Iris for a couple of months now, and I am very impressed. I am not sure if there is anything out there that will compete.