Hikvision video format and Power Director.

[scooby73466]

I have an annoying problem and wondered if there is a quick fix. When I use the record option when viewing previously recorded footage from my CCTV system on my Windows 8.1 64 bit desktop although the filename ends with .mp4 I find that I am unable to load it into my Cyberlink Power Director software if I want to edit it. I never have any trouble with any other mp4 files. I have found an answer in a 3rd party program called Video To Video which I have installed. The problem is that it doesn't matter which format I choose to change the original video to, it can be one of 30+ formats including wmv, AVI, mp1, mp11, even mp4, etc. etc. if I want a similar quality of video to that which I have recorded from the system the end result is always a file that is at least twice as big as the original.

I am fairly ignorant about bit rates, frame rates, etc. (I get an option to change of all those things in each format) but when I change the video format it will always load into Power Director, even if I have used the mp4 option in the Video To Video program which is, allegedly, the same as the format that comes out of my Hikvision system.

I would be very grateful if anyone could shed any light on this problem. Thank you in advance.

 

[Dan]

Hi @scooby73466

Hikvision cameras encrypt & compress their recorded footage in a unique way which means the downloaded mp4 files are not usually recognised by standard video software. The idea behind this is to stop people from editing/manipulating the footage because edited footage cannot be used as legal/court evidence.

This obviously is a problem for those that for a variety of other reasons DO want to edit their footage, the conversion software you are using is really the only way around this issue other than to record directly to a MicroSD card which you can then remove from the camera and stick directly into the PC, this lets you access the full recorded files and should load into video editing software better (this was how we extracted footage for our YouTube tests).

 

[scooby73466]

Hikvision cameras encrypt & compress their recorded footage in a unique way which means the downloaded mp4 files are not usually recognised by standard video software. The idea behind this is to stop people from editing/manipulating the footage because edited footage cannot be used as legal/court evidence.

This obviously is a problem for those that for a variety of other reasons DO want to edit their footage, the conversion software you are using is really the only way around this issue other than to record directly to a MicroSD card which you can then remove from the camera and stick directly into the PC, this lets you access the full recorded files and should load into video editing software better (this was how we extracted footage for our YouTube tests).

Thank you Dan for a really helpful and coheremt answer. I had wondered if the system encrypted the video files in some way since they are a fraction of the size of any file that has been converted to a similar standard to the original. To compress the video files is quite logical when you think about the huge mass of data that is stored on the NVR.

Thanks again and kind regards - David.