unit505

Ok - This sucks - I just got the company to spend nearly 60 grand on a surveillance system for part of my operation. We designed and imagined for nearly a year and then it was off to install. The whole beauty of this system is digital recording. E-mail video to admins, insurance, Etc. Everything is installed and recording and I have my first incident. I pull the video, download it to my thumb drive and run off to do my e-mails and investigation. The system is stand alone and not tied into our network (Security Reasons). I open the video up (.avi) and it won't play. I do some research, search for codecs and still nothing. Turns out that the system builder uses a version of Nero for the surveillance software and I cannot download just the .avi file. I have to download a player that is 65megs and includes the footage to view. So much for e-mailing the footage. I know this is proprietary software, but I need to convert the .avi to a normal .avi so that it will play on any version of media player or real player. I've gone back to the system builder and he did not get the concept of e-mailing video. "Just burn it to DVD and mail it to them". I bought a system that would get me away from old fashioned snail mail and result in quick investigations and claims processing. Any ideas?

Fortran

Quote: Originally Posted by unit505 Ok - This sucks - I just got the company to spend nearly 60 grand on a surveillance system for part of my operation. We designed and imagined for nearly a year and then it was off to install. The whole beauty of this system is digital recording. E-mail video to admins, insurance, Etc. Everything is installed and recording and I have my first incident. I pull the video, download it to my thumb drive and run off to do my e-mails and investigation. The system is stand alone and not tied into our network (Security Reasons). I open the video up (.avi) and it won't play. I do some research, search for codecs and still nothing. Turns out that the system builder uses a version of Nero for the surveillance software and I cannot download just the .avi file. I have to download a player that is 65megs and includes the footage to view. So much for e-mailing the footage. I know this is proprietary software, but I need to convert the .avi to a normal .avi so that it will play on any version of media player or real player. I've gone back to the system builder and he did not get the concept of e-mailing video. "Just burn it to DVD and mail it to them". I bought a system that would get me away from old fashioned snail mail and result in quick investigations and claims processing. Any ideas?

in order to convert from the proprietary codec to any other format you first need to know what codec is being used .... after that , you might even be able to play everything back without even needing to convert anything ....

i use this tool for identifying codecs whenever an avi doesnt play


http://www.headbands.com/gspot/v26x/index.html

4x0n

I second Fortrans choice of software, G-Spot is the shiznit.

thedemonxanth

Try using Nero to convert it to a vcd format. Should just be a regular avi file then.

PurpleDiamond

A good site with codec related downloads and info is Free-Codecs.com :: Download latest audio codecs, video codecs, codec packs and tools, FREE!.

Codec Pack All in 1

and

K-Lite Codec Pack

are good codec packs. I third the use of G-spot to identify what codec is used.