.bvr viewing via VLC on Mac? (or, how bad is .avi instead?)

[RROONNBB]

Has anybody ever managed to figure out a way to read .bvr files directly on a Mac, ideally through something like VLC?

Failing that, what's people's experiences been with writing directly to .avi or some other format that VLC is happy with? I know there's an issue with reading while writing but doesn't seem like that would be encountered very often in the real world. Anything else?

 

[fenderman]

Has anybody ever managed to figure out a way to read .bvr files directly on a Mac, ideally through something like VLC?

Failing that, what's people's experiences been with writing directly to .avi or some other format that VLC is happy with? I know there's an issue with reading while writing but doesn't seem like that would be encountered very often in the real world. Anything else?

why would you want to view your bvr files using vlc? use the blue iris interface...
bvr is more efficient...
some formats like mp4 and possible avi cannot be viewed while the file is being written to...

 

[RROONNBB]

Like I said, because I want to view on a Mac (or Linux for that matter) box. And (also like I said, sorry to be snarky) I'm aware of the simultaneous read/write issue but I'm not sure how often I'd really run into that. Depends on clip length?

 

[Terk]

The issue of not being able to read it while writing seems like it would happen frequently as anytime you get an alert on your mobile device and choose it before the alert recording time has lapsed or motion has stopped would prevent you from being able to see what it was just trying to alert you about. You could of course still switch to the live view but you may have missed the action by then and have to wait for the file to be accessible to view.

 

[fenderman]

Like I said, because I want to view on a Mac (or Linux for that matter) box. And (also like I said, sorry to be snarky) I'm aware of the simultaneous read/write issue but I'm not sure how often I'd really run into that. Depends on clip length?

Like I said ..why in the world would you want to...you can use the blue iris webserver or blue iris interface...you are not making sense...

 

[RROONNBB]

Videos need to be ingested into an editing package and that person doesn't have direct access to the Blue Iris box. Is there a way I'm not aware of to download and convert videos from the Blue Iris webserver?

 

[fenderman]

Videos need to be ingested into an editing package and that person doesn't have direct access to the Blue Iris box. Is there a way I'm not aware of to download and convert videos from the Blue Iris webserver?

yes...you can easily export video to avi and mp4...

 

[bp2008]

yes...you can easily export video to avi and mp4...

Not from the web server. I asked Ken if he could add an API for remote MP4 export and he thought it was a good idea, but that was months ago and he hasn't done anything about it yet.

The ActiveX plugin (for Internet Explorer) can export video files in AVI or MP4, I forget which. Blue Iris transcodes the stream as usual to send to the web client, and the ActiveX plugin packages it up into an mp4 or whatever filetype. Quality is lost doing this and it is limited by the speed of the transcoding.

 

[fenderman]

Not from the web server. I asked Ken if he could add an API for remote MP4 export and he thought it was a good idea, but that was months ago and he hasn't done anything about it yet.

The ActiveX plugin (for Internet Explorer) can export video files in AVI or MP4, I forget which. Blue Iris transcodes the stream as usual to send to the web client, and the ActiveX plugin packages it up into an mp4 or whatever filetype. Quality is lost doing this and it is limited by the speed of the transcoding.

if a file is needed he can log into the server and export..

 

[RROONNBB]

if a file is needed he can log into the server and export..

yeah but then we're back to a scenario where it's either going to require me to manually export/transcode or else give someone else access to the box which I don't really want to do.

Was contemplating a scenario where cron job is running to periodically move stuff into a dropbox or upload via FTP... but sounds like it's not going to be so easy.

Are there published specs on .bvr format or is it proprietary?

 

[fenderman]

yeah but then we're back to a scenario where it's either going to require me to manually export/transcode or else give someone else access to the box which I don't really want to do.

Was contemplating a scenario where cron job is running to periodically move stuff into a dropbox or upload via FTP... but sounds like it's not going to be so easy.

Are there published specs on .bvr format or is it proprietary?

You can have blue iris convert and export automatically...all this is silly...provide the person with webserver access...