HikVision NVR displays "No record file" during playback

[cosmo]

Has anyone seen this before?

Here's my setup:

I have two HikVision cameras on a HikVision NVR. Until this morning, everything has been fine.

I have continuous recording for both cameras as well as various settings for motion detection, line crossing, intrusion detection and email set up for these events.

Continuous recording has been in place for January 10, 11 and 12 (To avoid confusion to people here in the US this morning on the 11th, the NVR is in Australia where it is the 12th in the AM.) Yesterday, I was reviewing events captured on the 11th for both cameras. Today, I cannot view anything on camera 2 during the 11th. When I move the timeline anywhere into the 11th and press play, I get the message "No record file". Basically all the video from the 11th is not viewable, even though the timeline shows Continuous recording that whole day.

What's also strange is if I position the timeline to 11:59:30pm on the 10th, then start playing, it will play through into the 11th without a problem. But if I move the timeline elsewhere in the 11th, I get the error again.

It's as if the indexing mechanism to find a position in the 11th is corrupted, but it can play from the 10th into the 11th.

Can't find anything about it online from HikVision. Naturally.

 

[cosmo]

Update: I tried rebooting the NVR. Still nothing viewable from the 11th. When I selected the option to download footage from the 11th, there is an 891MB file which I can download (Although I won't. It will take forever over a remote ASDL connection from Australia to my VM in the US). So worst case, the footage isn't entirely lost. Although the way HikVision encodes the downloads is crap. You have to watch the entire thing. You can't move through to a specific place in the video. It's like it's not indexed at all. And you can't download just part of the day, like 6-6:30am. A search still results in the one big continuous file for the whole day.

 

[GCoco]

I have experienced this issue occassionally with a 7716 NVR. If found that either rebooting or power cycling the camera fixes the problem. Nothing I did to the NVR would resolve it. Hope this helps. Also I found now way to get the missing data.

 

[Securame]

And you can't download just part of the day, like 6-6:30am.

You can't do that from the web GUI, but you can do it from iVMS-4200.

 

[GCoco]

If your NVR has virtual host capability you can reboot from web GUI

 

[cosmo]

Rebooting is not a problem. It's working fine now, but I lost that one day. I can play "into" the day, but not select random points on that day and start playing. No major issue, but again, nothing from HikVision.

 

[cosmo]

Okay it just happened again. "No record host" for all of January 13 (It's the 13th here in the US, the 14th in Australia). I was viewing footage from the 13th yesterday without any problem at all. And it's not the same camera as last time. It makes me question the assumption that it is the camera, not the NVR.

I have experienced this issue occassionally with a 7716 NVR. If found that either rebooting or power cycling the camera fixes the problem. Nothing I did to the NVR would resolve it. Hope this helps. Also I found now way to get the missing data.

If I reboot the NVR will it reboot the cameras plugged into the PoE ports on the NVR? How did you find the missing data.

It's important now because yesterday I had an unknown person enter the building but I can no longer show that footage to anyone. This stuff has to be reliable. The more I really delve into how well HikVision performs, the more I feel like tossing it if I can find a better product. Cost isn't an issue.

 

[alastairstevenson]

It sounds unlikely it would be a cause, but it's easy to do - maybe check out the SMART detail for the HDD, especially any counts that could indicate problems such as reallocated sectors, command timeouts, failed anything.

 

[cosmo]

Ok. I'm assuming it's in this part of the configuration. Not sure what to look for in these numbers. But I'll reboot the NVR, run it then report back. It does say "Short Test", "Expanded Test" and "Conveyance Test". Also haven't looked up the last one. I'll start with Short. I'm hoping the poster that said they managed to recover the data will chime in and tell me how, otherwise I might contact them. I am curious.

 

[alastairstevenson]

It does say "Short Test", "Expanded Test" and "Conveyance Test". Also haven't looked up the last one. I'll start with Short.

The numbers look OK.
I wouldn't bother with any tests - the HDD has not reported any errors. If there were any, they'd be in the counts.

 

[cosmo]

Dammit! It's done it again. Lost the ability to view any footage on Camera 2 on Jan 16 (Jan 15 here). Yesterday I could view it all.

Can't be the camera because it is playback from the DVR and the playback worked fine on a previous day. Cameras not involved in that. Could be the hard drive. No errors from testing and those WD purples have a good reputation. But I do have a new one beside me to swap out when I go there again.

HikVision POS. No documentation. No support. Can't afford reliability problems when you're on another continent.

Switching to all Dahua on a newer installation. Will be interesting to see how it compares.

 

[cosmo]

Fast forward 3 weeks. I am seeing an entire day unavailable from the NVR from either camera, never both on the same day so far, about every 4 to 5 days. With no solution on the web, no HikVision support database and no support for grey market products, I am stuck with what has to be either a faulty NVR or drive. I will swap out the Western Digital Purple 4TB drive for a replacement when I am on site in 2 weeks. If that solves it, I know it's the drive. If not, it's the NVR. I will be testing a Dahua NVR and cameras there heavily over the next 3 months, so if they turn out to be superior to the HikVision for reliability and remote access, I will most likely dump the HikVision NVR and cameras entirely. If not, I will just have to put up with cheap Chinese equipment and after sales support. As the saying goes, you get what you pay for.

 

[cosmo]

Fast forward 1 month. The "No record file" is not a problem when viewing at the NVR, only when viewing remotely through a browser. How bizarre. I picked a day on which I can see nothing through the browser. I then went to the NVR and looked at footage from that day. No problem.

This might be why it is not commonly reported. People viewing on the NVR won't see a problem.

I swapped out the hard drive on March 6 right before flying back from Australia. Same make & model. WD 4TB purple. I get back here and guess what? I get "No record file" for March 7. But these time, for the first time, I get it on multiple cameras. Which is really, really bad. I'm relying on this footage for a legal case I'm involved with right now. A single camera going out I could live with. Multiple is bad, especially since the two cover the same area from different angles. March 8 footage appears.

I ordered an identical replacement unit here today so I can run through footage of the hard drive I removed. I'll be interested to confirm if I can see footage locally of the days I couldn't see remotely. I *should* be able to. It will be very interesting to see whether I can't see days remotely that I couldn't see on the other unit. Process of elimination. Either way, not good to have unreliable surveillance equipment.

 

[Trax95008]

i was having a really weird playback issue myself, that ended up being related to my NAS that i had setup for "redundant" recording. it took me a while to figure out that the NAS was the issue because when i had first set it up, it was all working great! it seemed to degrade over time, and was causing strange issues more and more often. once i had suspected the NAS and disassociated it from the NVR, all my issues went away! now im working on figuring out why it did that, and how to prevent it. anyways, my point is do you have a NAS involved??? try disconnecting from that

 

[255044]

I had two issues like this recently.

My setup is 4 cameras connected to the NVR.

I had set the camera schedule to record motion.

I had then set record and also notify in surveillance centre for smart events and basic events for intrusion detection, line crossing and motion.

One of my cameras totally stopped recording.

The other issue I had was when trying to playback clips from motion alerts in hikconnect some would work while others wouldn't. It would either say video not found, playback error or give me an error code. Searching the web didn't bring much up apart from this thread.

I've finally fixed it after 2 weeks of head scratching. Hopefully this will resolve it for you.

First thing I did was go to the schedule and change it to record on event rather than motion. (I think having motion set in event and also using standard motion was doubling up and confusing it).

The second thing I did was update my firmware on the NVR. Then go into each camera and disable everything and save. Then go back and Re-enable everything )to force backend config to rewrite).

Mines working great now.