Can’t Download exact footage!

[CCTVGUY99]

Hi Gurus’ I need some help!

I have a remote system miles and miles from me and need to download about an hours worth of footage it’s a DS7608 NI k2 nvr.

the footage is around an hour so I don’t wanna clip it as I’ll have to wait ages to get the footage, if I hit the download button and select the times I want to download and hit search It won’t let me download that exact time from A to B instead it gives me approx times around that area which is useless!!

how can I just download the exact times I need without:

A) travelling to site.
B ) waiting for it to clip

Really stupid design if this is the only way to download large footage without being able to pull exactly what is needed!

please help

 

[Dan]

Hi @CCTVGUY99

1hr of footage is a very large amount of footage to download in one go and I don't think there is going to be an easy way to download that length of footage as one file.

Clipping would probably be the only way to do it, but I have never left the clipping running that long and it may still download it as multiple files (that is if the browser access doesn't time out and log you out), The clipping method on a direct HDMI monitor is simpler as you can just drag and drop the start/stop points for clipping but again it may download multiple files and the time to download those files may be as long as the duration of the clip. (e.g. 1hr of footage may take 50 minutes to just over 1hr to download)

The way that a Hikvision NVR manages recordings is by packeting them into set time chunks (by default it is usually 30 minutes), which is why when you tried to download that hour of footage you saw multiple files because if for example, you wanted to download 9am to 10am the first packet covering 9am may actually start at 8:50am and run to 9:20am so to get the full hour would take 3 separate files.

You can on the NVR under Configuration > Storage > Advanced Settings > Other set a different packet time and you could try setting the packet time to over 1hr (70-80minutes)which may remove the above multiple file issue, but I'm not sure if the NVR will let you set packet times that long and even if it does the time it takes to download a 70-80 minute from the browser will be similar to clipping from the direct monitor. (maybe even longer as you are having to extract the footage over the internet and so your internet speed will affect the download speed)

The short answer is that Hikvision NVRs are not designed for this kind of large scale footage extraction, In most security scenarios the cameras capture an event/crime that lasts a few seconds to a few minutes and you then extract the incident and few minutes either side which means that most footage extractions are no longer than 15-20 minutes.

 

[CCTVGUY99]

Even short footage is an issue if you want to download 10-15 mins of footage you either sit through it or play Russian roulette with the times you enter and the times the nvr decides to give you.

mice been an installer for over 15 years and these hik Nora are terrible when it comes to simple footage download, even the cheap China Nora allow you to enter a start time and an end time and you actually get the footage you requested.

with regards to this being a long amount of footage I have taken bigger footage from nvr a as bad as SWANN?! And even then you can add the time and get the requested footage!

 

[CCTVGUY99]

Apologies for the rant it’s just a crap way to do things lol,

with regards to the packet sizes I have looked at this before however in the example of the requested 1 hour footage from the previous night I put in 17:08 to 18:08 and the nvr returned one file for download:

16:28 until 17:15?!

 

[CCTVGUY99]

Here is a prime example…. We have 30 of these units out across the country , I’ve just dialled into a random unit and asked for 5 minutes of footage (see times on the left) it returns 01:55


that’s a blatant fault in the firmware! Also note that on this nvr the packet sizes etc are default

 

[CCTVGUY99]

It wouldn’t even be so bad if when clipping you could drag the time bar area or highlight the segment you want but instead you have to sit there for x amount of minutes and watch it whilst you wait for where you want it to stop