nuvico camera files

Does anyone know of anything that'll play (or convert) the video files (.nvf) from a set of nuvico security cameras? I want to pull a couple of frames out in order to try and enhance them, but I was expecting data in some more widespread format rather than this crap, which looks to be completely proprietary.

Actually, looking at the file in a hex editor, it does seem to have a DOS/ Windows .exe header - which isn't of any use at all to me on Linux, of course, but I could rustle up a Windows box if anyone happens to know

*why* it appears to be executable (I don't particularly fancy just blindly trying to run it, but I wonder if it's embedded with its own player or somesuch...)

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson
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Anything here of any use?

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Reply to
Tim+

Nuvico say the .exe version is the .nvf file attached to a mini player program. The .exe header is probably a decoder for an encrypted video file. They also say that from the DVRs, you can export standard .mp4 files. Other than that, they claim that the .nvf file system is "tamper proof". You *could* try extracting the .mp4 from the .nvf file or just renaming it to .avi and trying to play it as an mp4 using h.264 decoding. It probably won't be that easy, mind....

Reply to
John Williamson

It shouldn't be easy really... as cctv systems are supposed to record in an encrypted format that is tamper proof, or at least tamper evident, so they can be used as evidence and all that.

Reply to
Gazz

Thanks, I'd missed that - I'd just poked at the file in a hex editor (to see if it looked like it was something well supported within a proprietary wrapper) and noticed that it appeared to have an EXE header.

In the end I've managed to rustle up a sacrificial Windows box and so tried simply renaming the file to have a .exe extension - and lo and behold, it works; it does have an embedded player. Quite creative, I suppose, but also a little odd in that it needs the file renaming before it'll play on a machine which doesn't have the camera software installed (or, I expect, the same could be achieved with some file association magic),

Anyway, up and running now, so ta :)

J.

Reply to
Jules Richardson

True, it shouldn't be easy, but when was the last time you worked on the one and only copy of a digital file?

You can do what you like to a copy, leaving the original untouched except that it's (Possibly) been marked as read by the OS.

Anyway, it turned out to be a trivial matter of changing the extension....

Reply to
John Williamson

Reply to
incubusom

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