nuvico camera files

[Jules Richardson]

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

 

[Tim+]

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

Anything here of any use?
http://forums.techguy.org/software-development/894708-nvf-files.html

Tim

 

[John Williamson]

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...)

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....

 

[Gazz]

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....

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.

 

[Jules Richardson]

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.

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.

 

[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.

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....