Blue Iris 4 to 5 Migration Guide

archedraft said:
I decided to give BI v5 a try today coming from BI v4. I thought I would share my experiences. After reading all the issues with uninstalling BI v4 after v5 was installed, I decided I would try a different approach. The approach I took seemed to work without any issues; however, it could also be that the latest version of v5 is improved.
  1. I stopped running v4 as a service
  2. Made a registry backup
  3. Deactivated my activation key
  4. Completely uninstalled BI v4 and said "Yes" when it asked if I also wanted to remove the registry settings
  5. Installed BI v5
  6. It automatically prompted me to install the Visual Studio dependencies it wanted
  7. Gave it my activation key
  8. Imported my registry backup from V4
  9. Enabled run as a service after going into services.msc and putting in the correct username and password for my network server locations
Everything came back up! The Webserver is working from both the computer and the phone app. I would imagine there are a few "gremlins" with BI v5 that are being worked out, one of which is I am unable to export video into any format (I sent that into support, in the event they were not aware).
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Err....hmmm.....may I ask, when you mentioned step 7: Gave it my activation key
Does it mean that you key in the UPGRADE KEY (KEY emailed by Perspective Software when you renewed your software support and maintenance)?
 
wepee said:
Thanks for your advice, your steps look similar to what I want to achieve..........that is to use BI on another PC,
except that you are not going to use BI v5 just yet.
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Yes, my goal was to get the extended support key (meaning my main key that had the extended support activated on) activated with BI5.

You need to use your main key when setting up BI5. If you have not already you should put your upgraded support key in BI4 first and then it will say BI5 eligible. Then use your main key when installing BI5. Did you do that already so it says Version 5 eligible?
 
TL1096r said:
Did you do that already so it says Version 5 eligible?
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Yes I have done that, I saw the message: eligible Version 5 in the BI option tab -> about tab -> under software support and maintenance section.
That is after I keyed in the upgrade key given by Perspective Software.

But my real question is can I use the upgrade key.....
1) Deactivate the upgrade key from BI v4 on my old PC (i7-4790)
2) Install a fresh copy of BI v5 on a new PC( i7-7700)
3) Use the upgrade key to activate my BI V5 license on the new PC

My steps is similar to what archedraft said earlier.

From what I gather, you need to use the Main / original key of BI v4 + upgrade key
in order to get BI v5 working.
 
wepee said:
Yes I have done that, I saw the message: eligible Version 5 in the BI option tab -> about tab -> under software support and maintenance section.
That is after I keyed in the upgrade key given by Perspective Software.

But my real question is can I use the upgrade key.....
1) Deactivate the upgrade key from BI v4 on my old PC (i7-4790)
2) Install a fresh copy of BI v5 on a new PC( i7-7700)
3) Use the upgrade key to activate my BI V5 license on the new PC

My steps is similar to what archedraft said earlier.

From what I gather, you need to use the Main / original key of BI v4 + upgrade key
in order to get BI v5 working.
Click to expand...

Yes that is correct.
 
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I was unaware that I had to upgrade from.4 to 5 within 30 days or lose that possibility. I'm running 4 with extended service and it says it's eligible for the V5 upgrade.

Seeing that folks are still having a few issues with 5, I was planning on waiting until it appeared that all was stable, and the upgrade was hopefully made more "automatic" before doing the upgrade.

Am I reading this correctly, that I must "use it or lose it" so to speak, before July 1? With nothing to complain about running V4, and being the busiest time of year for me at work, I was figuring on waiting until it was more convenient and things were more settled before doing the update.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting this, so forgive me for what may be a stupid question.
 
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J Sigmo said:
I was unaware that I had to upgrade from.4 to 5 within 30 days or lose that possibility. I'm running 4 with extended service and it says it's eligible for the V5 upgrade.

Seeing that folks are still having a few issues with 5, I was planning on waiting until it appeared that all was stable, and the upgrade was hopefully made more "automatic" before doing the upgrade.

Am I reading this correctly, that I must "use it or lose it" so to speak, before July 1? With nothing to complain about running V4, and being the busiest time of year for me at work, I was figuring on waiting until it was more convenient and things were more settled before doing the update.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting this, so forgive me for what may be a stupid question.
Click to expand...
I was thinking the 30 day deal applies only when if you BUY the full version of BI4 you can get new BI5 for 30 days. I would think if you are sitting on 4.8.6.3 with the "eligible for BI5" state you would have until your extended support plan expiration date to upgrade. I would just shoot support a email and get this cleared up.
 
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wepee said:
Err....hmmm.....may I ask, when you mentioned step 7: Gave it my activation key
Does it mean that you key in the UPGRADE KEY (KEY emailed by Perspective Software when you renewed your software support and maintenance)?
Click to expand...

I entered my original key I purchased, not my extended support key.
 
Ok so it seems there are a load of issues and the sensible advice is to allow this software time to bed in with the early adopters prior to upgrading a system where you need this system to work?

I bought and additional 1 Years worth of support just prior to the V5 release so that I can upgrade when needed and i'm currently V5 eligible.

My First question is do I have to upgrade before 1st July 2019?

My Second question is I have read these forums but is there a bug list or fixes list to let me know when some of the major issues being experience by users are ironed out so I know when to stop waiting and take the plunge?

Cheers

Lee
 
Lee Wilkinson said:
So how can you see the updates that have been addressed in each release please, from that I can work out when the major bugs have been squished and when its safe to upgrade?
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Currently, there isn't any way to see the upgrade notes other than from the window that checks for updates if you are already on version 5 as far as I can tell. I too, wish that a changelog would be published for each release.
 
morrisky said:
Currently, there isn't any way to see the upgrade notes other than from the window that checks for updates if you are already on version 5 as far as I can tell. I too, wish that a changelog would be published for each release.
Click to expand...

That would be nice, but I imagine Ken just doesn't want the added overhead of trying to produce a change log for every little patch.
 
Lee Wilkinson said:
Ok so it seems there are a load of issues and the sensible advice is to allow this software time to bed in with the early adopters prior to upgrading a system where you need this system to work?

I bought and additional 1 Years worth of support just prior to the V5 release so that I can upgrade when needed and i'm currently V5 eligible.

My First question is do I have to upgrade before 1st July 2019?

My Second question is I have read these forums but is there a bug list or fixes list to let me know when some of the major issues being experience by users are ironed out so I know when to stop waiting and take the plunge?

Cheers

Lee
Click to expand...

I read it as 30 days to upgrade from release date of BI5 which would be July 1st no matter if you have just bought bi4 or extended support key months ago in anticipation of upgrading to v5?

As many I was not ready to run v5 on my main server so I deactivated bi5 eligible on main computer and installed on a different one so now my bi4 key is converted to bi5 ready to use on main computer when I feel more comfortable to upgrade.

If I am wrong please let us know.
 
TL1096r said:
I read it as 30 days to upgrade from release date of BI5 which would be July 1st no matter if you have just bought bi4 or extended support key months ago in anticipation of upgrading to v5?

As many I was not ready to run v5 on my main server so I deactivated bi5 eligible on main computer and installed on a different one so now my bi4 key is converted to bi5 ready to use on main computer when I feel more comfortable to upgrade.

If I am wrong please let us know.
Click to expand...
No you can upgrade next year...as long as the license was activated after april 1 or you purchased a support plan. There is no july cutoff.
 
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Installed the full BI5 package and ran into the same issues as others. Visual Studio upgrade crashed my Outlook 2007. Since Office 2007 was at the end of its life-cycle, I installed an Office 2010 Pro copy that I have been meaning to install. I am proficient and never understand snide remarks by some on forums berating people that are frustrated and do not have the experience troubleshooting problems.

My time is valuable to me, and I have many other projects that require my attention over spending hours to get a machine to run cleanly. I reached a point that I decided BI5 was not ready to bet my security system on. Luckily I exported my settings purely out of habit, and I keep receipts and key codes for everything. Good thing because the BI5 upgrade blew everything out of BI4. I was able to get BI4 back up and running in a matter of seconds and not hours.

I gave up Beta testing years ago, and I am grateful for people that have that kind of time, but I would rather convert that time being productive for my own household.
 
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I just wanted to share my experience here with the upgrade from BI 4 to 5.
I run BI on a Win 10 VM and the New and Stored footage is pointed to a mapped drive on the host server. The database is on the default C: drive location, but this is synced to the server.
Everything went fine until I tried to import the settings into BI5 and then it just would not play ball and stopped working altogether. I then uninstalled it and reinstalled BI4 and this would now not work (I can only assume that the registry on the VM became corrupt in the install/settings import).
Luckily, I have a robust backup and didn't lose any footage or the database. I recreated the VM and reinstalled BI4 and it was up and running again in a matter of a few hours without issue. I then decided to create a new VM for BI5, to the same spec as the BI4 unit. Everything was identical, right down to the installed applications. After I installed BI5, I shut down BI4 I imported the settings into BI5, copied across the database folder contents and pointed the New and Stored footage to the same location on the server and checked that all the settings worked (given that they are slightly different on BI5); the idea being that I can do a direct comparison between the 2 versions, while creating a level playing field for them both.
The difference between the two versions was very noticeable. Where BI4 ran at approx 30-40% CPU load (I don't use hardware encoding), BI5 ran at 70-85% with many spikes up to 95-100%. Memory usage is also greater, by about 20-30%.
So my conclusion is that BI5 is far from a polished finished product and the anticipated improved efficiency has not materialised, just the opposite in fact.
No doubt the folks over at Blue Iris will get this working properly before long, but until they do, I'll be taking a rain check and will stick with BI4
 
I got this in the mail today. Maybe good news on updates and more stable if sending emails?

Links from email...
https://www.smartsentry.ai/

http://blueirissoftware.com/Support/

http://blueirissoftware.com/Download/

IW9qKe3.png
 
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Tried installing BI5 today and it lost all motion settings for all profiles other than Profile 1. All the cameras were set to "Sync with Profile 1"
 
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