u/Redditanon9999

First, why are the Flair options so horrible? I couldn't find one that would suit. Is this something the mods can fix?

Over the last 6 months I'd been using a UNVR-Instant and posting about how I'd gone way beyond their recommendations for cameras and it was working great. I'd even posted asking people what I should be looking at to find deficiencies. I was running well over double their recommendation and I was finding performance of video playback, etc to be just fine. I was using a 12 TB WD Purple Pro drive.

When the UNVR-G2 came out I was interested in it for the extra AI features but at first didn't see enough reason to buy one. Finding out that the early ones were coming with 16 GB of RAM instead of 8 GB seemed like a deal and I love a deal. So after waiting weeks for stock to become available I bought one (and got the 16 GB) and have been running it for nearly a week now. I also couldn't find anybody that could give me real world experience of moving from the Instant to a G2 so I decided to find out for myself and share.

I had been having problems with my G6 PTZ cameras failing to respond to PTZ commands or just behaving erratically. E.g. a tap to move caused the camera to keep going until it hit the limit. I've been working with UI to debug this but so far I've mainly only gotta possible reasons but no clear answer. One thing that did come up was the overloaded UNVR-Instant could be the problem but I'm still waiting on an answer as to why. I have a feeling that the PTZ commands to start and to stop are managed by the UNVR instead of by the camera, so if the UNVR is busy it may not send the stop command. But that's just a theory.

Since moving most of my cameras to the UNVR G2 the erratic movements have stopped BUT there has also been firmware updates, one mentioning addressing some PTZ issues. I still do have G6 PTZs that just stop responding to PTZ commands. Rebooting ether the camera or the NVR will fix this for a while.

So, I wanted to come back here and post my experience and let people know that although it seems OK to overload the UNVR-Instant by a factor of two, you might want to avoid doing so if you have PTZ cameras. Beyond that I saw no other problems that were unique to the UNVR-Instant.

Now on to some other experience differences between the 2 UVNRs. Other than the AI features, there's not much to speak of. Certainly the UNVR-G2 is specced for 5X the number of cameras, it has a lot more RAM and CPU power, capacity for 4 drives, but I'm really not seeing any user experience performance differences between the 2 UNVRs at this time. There will be a point where the G2 will handle more cameras than the Instant, but even with 16 cameras the Instant was doing well. I truly believe the UNVR-Instant is a great NVR and for many it is all we need. Don't discount it because of the low recommended camera count or because it looks like consumer grade gear, it's likely capable of more than you expect. I'm still running mine.

BTW, that deal of getting more RAM? Well, so far my UVNR-G2 is only using 5 GB so an 8 GB model would be fine for me and the extra 8 to get 16 GB buys me nothing so far.

I use Protect from both web and iOS along with Apple Photos. In Photos if you scrub through a video it is very smooth, just moves faster. In Protect I thought it used to be more like this.

However, I've noticed recently that if I am on iOS app and you scrub an event it stops the video, shades it, gives you a position in seconds and when you stop it jumps to the new position. If you are in the timeline looking the same time period, it sorta scrubs but it drops to low res and seems to jump by a second or more, not just a faster frame rate. In Safari on a Mac viewing an event the video stops, doesn't shade, lets you scroll the bar at the bottom and when you stop it jumps to the new location. In the timeline/playback it seems to advance 1 second at a time if you scrub very slowly and it stays in high res.

So iOS and Web versions behave differently from each other and it seems differently from previous versions. I'm running Protect 7.1.75.

I'm finding it very hard to find a particular spot in a video because of this. I thought it used to be better. I find I have to download a longer section, load it in to Apple Photos and scrub through it there if I am trying to find a particular few frames.

I have a UNVR-Instant running with 14 cameras and a 12 TB Purple Pro disk (gives 14 days high res retention). I only run Protect. 11 cameras are 4K+ and 3 are 2K (3 of the cameras are ONVIF). I have all features turned on including the heatmap, connection to Home Assistant, continuous record, smart detections etc. I am over double Ubiquiti's recommendation but it seems to be running fine. CPU and Memory usage are reasonable (around 1/2 of capacity).

I am trying to figure out if an upgrade to a UNVR or UNVR-G2 would make any real difference to me. I.e. Am I missing out on something? I know this seems like an odd question, if it's working for me why upgrade?? I'm really trying to understand if my experience is compromised. Is there something I don't know about?

The UNVR-Instant seems quick, I can scroll through "find anything" and it refreshes in a split second. I can click on an event and get a high res playback within a split second. I can scroll through the timeline on a camera and it will do the low res during the scroll but return to high res within a 1/2 second. I have some G6 PTZs, the PTZ function seems fairly smooth, could be smoother but that may be a camera/network issue.

What feature would really stress a UNVR? Is it a matter of there just not being a lot of events (I'm rural, events are low) so I'm seeing great results?

Thanks.

In Canada the AI Key is $1145 and the UNVR G2 is $1005. AI key is a little faster doing AI work (if you need that) and has a couple features such as the AI summaries and speech to text, and adding face detection and LPR to G5 cameras (could use a AI port for those last 2). However, you don't need those, it seems buying a UNVR G2 is a better deal than a AI Key and would allow you to sell your current UNVR.

So, it would seem the AI Key price needs to come down, right?