CCTV DVR has crappy windows 10 playback software.

[rajhlinux]

Hello,

I bought a DVR called "InVid DVR" and for some reason extracting the video as AVI from it gives terrible video extraction quality.
So I extract the videos as a "private" format to a USB stick, which is like a native raw original video format which is only understood by "InVid" DVR software.

I only have two options of format for extraction from "InVid" DVR, either "AVI" or "PRIVATE".

Once I extract the "private" video format, I use their software called "RPASPlayer32_Release.exe" on windows 10 to be able to view the "private" video format and for some reason extracting the video as AVI from the computer provides a better video quality than extracting AVI from the actual DVR itself.

The problem I'm facing with when extracting the AVI format from the "PRIVATE" format from windows 10 using "RPASPlayer32_Release.exe" (provided by InVid) is that this "RPASPlayer32_Release.exe" keeps crashing and is a buggy software.

I have uploaded a video sample of what my DVR provides when I choose "PRIVATE" format. Maybe someone is able to reverse engineer how "InVid" saves videos to the hard drive. I also wonder if it is possible to extract data out from my DVR hard drive if I connect the DVR hard drive to my computer. So war windows 10 or Ubuntu does not understand the the DVR hard drive file system format.

You will need to use "RPASPlayer32_Release.exe" and then click on "open folder" and open the folder with the weird numbers(since that is the folder which contains the video).

Are there any alternative DVR video players which can understand the "PRIVATE" video format of my DVR?
Is it possible I can somehow maybe do some hack to make VLC understand this "PRIVARE" video format?

I bought so many DVRs and all of them are useless and now I started to build my own custom DVR PC based which are so much more reliable and headache free.

Thanks.

[Hoser Rob]

This question has been asked many times on this forum. The answer is always the same. Proprietary video formats are totally routine if not universal on DVRs. You can't reverse engineer something like this without proper specs, and no company is going to provide those. Nothing much to be done here.