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Thursday, September 13, 2012

Careful inspection of DME output

Here's the scenario:
  • I navigate through the DVR's menu and select two camera views for export, date, time, etc.
  • I export the selected views to my USB stick.
  • I open the USB stick on my laptop to check the contents. I've got 3 files, a player and two files of video (I hope).
  • I launch the player and verify that I've got the requested video. Date/time/view checks out - I've got what I want.
Back in the lab ...
  • I want to generate still images. The player has no image save functionality. It does, however, have an AVI save option.
  • I export the file to AVI. No options are available (codec, uncompressed, etc.)
  • I launch the resulting file in GOM.
  • I notice something rather interesting - in the DVR player software, the requested/saved view is displayed. There is no option to go to multi-cam view or to view other camera feeds. It simply shows the requested exported file. But ... the AVI has all the camera views (16 in this case) for the requested time/date. Hmm...
So, I opened the file in AmpedFIVE. Sure enough, I can demux all the views, see each camera, and work with the file to generate still images.


I've tried to look into the DVR manufacturer, but this is all I have to go on. I'm sure that you've seen similarly limited About screens.

So the lesson here is that there might be more to your DME than meets the eye.

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