IP Camera .prv files

ciderboy2009

Hi all,

I've got a cheap IP camera covering the front of my house with a 128Gb SD card installed for recordings.

The camera was recently vandalised and no longer works.  I've got the SD card from it and was hoping to run through the recordings to see if I can spot who actually did it (I have suspicions).  However, the recordings are all in .prv format - a format I'm struggling to find a player for.

Has anybody ever come across an app (Windows or Android)  that I can use to view them?

tallmansix

I'd try opening them with a universal video player such as VLC player, don't worry about the extension, it is probably a common h264 / mp4 format video file so if you have it on Windows, do a right click "open with" and select VLC player and see what happens (after installing VLC if you haven't already).

I'm sure you've realised now but for security cameras having the footage stored remotely from the camera is vital as serious incidents will involve removing / breaking the camera.

pbartlett

Doing a quick Google the underlying file format seems to be most likely mpeg2. But it may not be of course.

You could rename one .mpg and see if it plays

ciderboy2009

tallmansix said:

I'd try opening them with a universal video player such as VLC player, don't worry about the extension, it is probably a common h264 / mp4 format video file so if you have it on Windows, do a right click "open with" and select VLC player and see what happens (after installing VLC if you haven't already).

I'm sure you've realised now but for security cameras having the footage stored remotely from the camera is vital as serious incidents will involve removing / breaking the camera.

Unfortunately VLC can't play the files.

I bought this camera as a quick fix - it's replacement (ordered before the damage) will be recording directly to my NAS.

ciderboy2009

pbartlett said:

You could rename one .mpg and see if it plays

That hasn't worked either I'm afraid.

Interestingly, when the camera was working Idownloaded a couple of recorded clips directly from it using the app and they are MP4 files but near enough exactly double the size per clip as the PRV files.

I'm therefore starting to think that it's some kind of compressed MP4 (although I thought that MP4 was already compressed).

I've tried unzipping one of the files with 7Zip but no joy (even if I alter the extension to ZIP, 7z etc).

I can't believe that there's nothing out there that will allow me to play them - it's just a case of finding it.

tallmansix

Scroll down to "PRV to MP4 conversion software" on this page and see if it works:

http://www.esunstar.net/Support.asp?pid=277&cid=279

ciderboy2009

@tallmansix Many thanks for that link - it's working perfectly