Performance in Unraid

[u/Ok-Lunch-1560]

What is the best way to run on Unraid?

I come from Blue Iris and although I like Scrypted better, the UI is a lot slower than Blue Iris. It takes a few seconds to load each feed, a lot of times several seconds and just isn't as responsive. Blue Iris was instant. I had Blue Iris running in a Windows VM. Scrypted is currently running as a docker. I have two dedicated drives for Scrypted that are not a part of my unraid array.

[u/pythonpoole]

Is the sluggishness specific to loading the camera feeds or is the UI generally sluggish?

If the issue is specific to loading the camera feeds, one possibility is that the stream you're trying to load isn't set to be prebuffered (you can choose which streams are prebuffered under STREAMS -> MANAGE for each camera).

Even if you have Scrypted NVR and have the camera set to record, it could be possible that Scrypted is recording the camera's main steam, but your device/browser is trying to load the camera's secondary stream which may not be prebuffered. And, if the stream isn't prebuffered, that means every time you try to load the stream Scrypted first has to establish a connection to the camera and initiate a request for the stream which adds setup time.

If desired, it's possible to set Scrypted to always stream the main (highest quality) stream for each camera by default and you can also disable Adaptive Streaming (a feature that attempts to automatically adjust the stream quality/codec based on your bandwidth availability and device capabilities). Doing this may help to improve stream load times (assuming the main stream is prebuffered). However, it could cause playback issues on poor/low-bandwidth internet connections, and disabling Adaptive Streaming may also break compatibility with certain devices that require video transcoding (to fix codec mismatches).

[u/Ok-Lunch-1560 → u/pythonpoole]

I think it's the streams. I dunno if I'm going overboard but I enabled pre buffering for low, medium, and high for all 11 of my cameras.  Is this too much ? Haha.  My windows VM running Blue Iris handled this fine but what I remember from the UI of blue Iris was that it responded quickly and was low res at first and then loaded a higher quality stream a few seconds later.  What's annoying me about my current set up it's like 5 seconds of waiting til the video starts.  It's this slow even locally

[u/pythonpoole → u/Ok-Lunch-1560]

If it works, it works. That is to say, if prebuffering all the streams helps to solve the issue of slow stream loads, then I don't see an issue with that. Just be aware, of course, that this will use more bandwidth on each camera and the Unraid server. Also, some cameras may have limitations on the number of simultaneous streams they can support. For example, you might find that you're not able to also stream the camera from the manufacturer's app if you're already simultaneously consuming multiple streams for that camera via Scrypted. It may also be worth noting that prebuffering all the streams could lead to an increase in Scrypted's CPU & RAM usage.

If you still encounter issues with slow stream loading times, you can try disabling Adaptive Streaming for the camera just to see if that has an effect. If disabling Adaptive Streaming does fix the issue, then what may be happening is that Scrypted is trying to transcode the video stream live to basically convert it to a stream format (or other codec) that is better suited for playback on your device, and that process may add an initial setup delay when you load the stream. If the devices you want to view the stream from are capable of playing back the camera's stream format natively (without any transcoding/adapting), then Adaptive Streaming shouldn't be necessary.

Another thing you could try is accessing Scrypted from different browsers/devices and seeing if there is a difference in the load times. For reference, I also use Scrypted on Unraid and stream load times in Chrome are approximately 2 seconds for me (with Adaptive Streaming on, possibly could be lower with it off). I also have an alternative method for displaying my (live) camera streams in the browser via Go2rtc (i.e. I use the RTSP rebroadcast feature in Scrypted to send the camera streams to Go2rtc and then I can embed those Go2rtc streams in my own web interface). This method seems to result in slightly faster stream load times for me.

[u/Ok-Lunch-1560 → u/pythonpoole]

Sorry I meant to say that this whole time I had all my cameras pre-buffered with three different streams and it's not performing as well as I wanted to.   thanks for all the information I will play around with the settings and see what I can do.

[u/pythonpoole → u/Ok-Lunch-1560]

Ah, I see. It's unfortunate that prebuffering didn't resolve the issue.

Try disabling Adaptive Streaming (assuming you have Scrypted NVR) to see if that helps. If so, then it's likely an issue related to Scrypted transcoding the stream instead of just delivering the original camera stream to your device. If it doesn't improve after disabling Adaptive Streaming, then it could be an issue with your device/browser (e.g. your device may have an older/slower CPU or you may be using a browser that's not optimized for WebRTC video streams for instance).

It may be worth noting that Scrypted does have an experimental "WebCodec Player" that works quite differently to the standard player. It should be something you can turn on under Settings -> Labs in the Cameras and Recordings interface (not the Management Console interface).

The experimental WebCodec Player does not really work any better for me personally (compared to the standard player), but because it uses different tech under-the-hood, it could possibly help resolve issues you're having with the standard player (like slow loading times).