IP camera which saves files in portable format?

[Bill Door]

Hi from England! First post I'd like to buy an outdoor IP camera with IR and 1080p min, but I'm really struggling to get any info on file formats from sale sites. I don't want to spend a fortune.

I'm keen to find a camera that saves its files in a portable and sharable format like mkv, mp4 or avi etc etc, easy to transfer from PC to PC without installing software or converting. Plus easy upload to youtube. But I can't find any retail sites or reviews that bother to go to that level of detail.

Can anyone recommend a review / selling site which has such file format detail? Or even recommend a camera? Thanks.


I've already been burned a little - I installed an iegeek cheapie from amazon as an experiment, but it creates proprietary .264 raw files which can only be viewed using their own home-grown clunky software. Also it seems to tunnel to a server in China, so I intend to abandon that.

 

[VorlonFrog]

Anything remotely-cloud-based gets an immediate thumbs-down from me. Good for you! I believe Blue Iris running on a PC can record videos in MP4 format. If you choose this format, be certain to limit the video file sizes so that the files are properly closed/completed, and are not too large.

 

[Bill Door]

The Blue Iris looks interesting, but it's not going to be practical for the way the camera will be used.

There are cameras that have firmware which is licenced to encode in a compressed codec, it's just that the retail sites don't say which is which.

 

[alastairstevenson]

There are cameras that have firmware which is licenced to encode in a compressed codec, it's just that the retail sites don't say which is which.

You'll find that most/all the camera specifications do list the codecs they can support, almost standard is h.264, very common now is h.265 and enhanced variants of it, some proprietary.
MJPEG has pretty well fallen by the wayside.

By the way - maybe do some reading on the difference purposes of the video 'container file' that holds mainly metadata about the video, and the codec which defines the actual video data compressed format inside it.

 

[Bill Door]

The camera we have creates .264 files which are raw and can only be opened by the supplied software.

I assume then that h.264 is different from .264?

Google is entirely unhelpful trying to work out the difference.

 

[alastairstevenson]

The camera we have creates .264 files which are raw and can only be opened by the supplied software.

Can you attach a sample - not too big? probably need to zip it for the forum to not object.

 

[Bill Door]

Certainly, thanks for taking a look.

 

[alastairstevenson]

The file format is non-standard, presumably deliberately so to try to tie you in to the product.
A quick look at your file with the usual tools that give file info gives this negative result, along with an equivalent for comparison on some AVI files from my helmet cam that happened to be in the same folder.

Spoiler: File info

alastair@PC-I5 ~/tmp $ file *
A181017_171348_171402.264: data
A181017_171348_171402.zip: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract
FILE0545.AVI:              RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 1280 x 720, >30 fps, video: H.264 X.264 or H.264, audio: (stereo, 32000 Hz)
FILE0546.AVI:              RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 1280 x 720, >30 fps, video: H.264 X.264 or H.264, audio: (stereo, 32000 Hz)
FILE0547.AVI:              RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 1280 x 720, >30 fps, video: H.264 X.264 or H.264, audio: (stereo, 32000 Hz)
FILE0548.AVI:              RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 1280 x 720, >30 fps, video: H.264 X.264 or H.264, audio: (stereo, 32000 Hz)
FILE0549.AVI:              RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 1280 x 720, >30 fps, video: H.264 X.264 or H.264, audio: (stereo, 32000 Hz)
FILE0550.AVI:              RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 1280 x 720, >30 fps, video: H.264 X.264 or H.264, audio: (stereo, 32000 Hz)
alastair@PC-I5 ~/tmp $ mediainfo *.264
General
Complete name                            : A181017_171348_171402.264
File size                                : 2.19 MiB


alastair@PC-I5 ~/tmp $ mediainfo FILE0545*
General
Complete name                            : FILE0545.AVI
Format                                   : AVI
Format/Info                              : Audio Video Interleave
File size                                : 154 MiB
Duration                                 : 2 min 1 s
Overall bit rate                         : 10.6 Mb/s

Video
ID                                       : 0
Format                                   : AVC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                           : High@L4
Format settings                          : CABAC / 1 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC                   : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames                : 1 frame
Codec ID                                 : H264
Duration                                 : 2 min 1 s
Bit rate                                 : 10.5 Mb/s
Width                                    : 1 280 pixels
Height                                   : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio                     : 16:9
Frame rate                               : 60.000 FPS
Color space                              : YUV
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:0
Bit depth                                : 8 bits
Scan type                                : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)                       : 0.190
Stream size                              : 151 MiB (99%)

Audio
ID                                       : 1
Format                                   : AAC
Format/Info                              : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile                           : LC
Codec ID                                 : FF-2
Duration                                 : 2 min 0 s
Bit rate                                 : 128 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L R
Sampling rate                            : 32.0 kHz
Frame rate                               : 31.250 FPS (1024 SPF)
Compression mode                         : Lossy
Stream size                              : 1.85 MiB (1%)
Alignment                                : Split accross interleaves
Interleave, duration                     : 32  ms (1.92 video frames)


alastair@PC-I5 ~/tmp $

The file does not play with the Linux Media Player or VLC, but does play OK with the Linux 'mpv Video Player'.
mpv player has a reputation for quietly making sense of all sorts of weird video formats that other players baulk at.
That monoblock is going to need quite a lot of weeding ...

An inspection of the file shows a customised header, from which a little research yields this gem : Cheap Chinese camera garbled .264 files

Out of curiosity, I did try his 'convert' program in a Win7 VM and it did almost give a usable video, though with wrong frame rates and other quirks.
May be worth trying out of interest.

 

[Rodrigo Eggea]

Hi from England! First post I'd like to buy an outdoor IP camera with IR and 1080p min, but I'm really struggling to get any info on file formats from sale sites. I don't want to spend a fortune.

I'm keen to find a camera that saves its files in a portable and sharable format like mkv, mp4 or avi etc etc, easy to transfer from PC to PC without installing software or converting. Plus easy upload to youtube. But I can't find any retail sites or reviews that bother to go to that level of detail.

Can anyone recommend a review / selling site which has such file format detail? Or even recommend a camera? Thanks.

I've already been burned a little - I installed an iegeek cheapie from amazon as an experiment, but it creates proprietary .264 raw files which can only be viewed using their own home-grown clunky software. Also it seems to tunnel to a server in China, so I intend to abandon that.

Hi Bill,

I'm testing this security camera TPTEK IP WIFI CAMERA HD1080 from AliExpress, and I'm enjoying a lot. You can put a card up to 64GB for recording. It has ONVIF protocol, that allow you to record the video from any NVR. In the smartphone you need to use CAMHI app to watch in real-time viewing, or to watch the recordings.

For PC Desktop you need to install HIP2P Client, its a free VMS to watch the camera, it also comes with two tools "264 convert" to convert the raw 264 files from camera and "player" that allow to play raw 264 files from camera.

You can also perform advanced camera settings by accessing the camera through the web browser http: //<camera-local-ip-address> or access the recording files at the address http://<camera-local-ip-address/sd (but you need to convert the raw 264 file using the conversion tool or watch using the player that comes with hip2p client)

Hope this helps

 

[fenderman]

Hi Bill,

I'm testing this security camera TPTEK IP WIFI CAMERA HD1080 from AliExpress, and I'm enjoying a lot. You can put a card up to 64GB for recording. It has ONVIF protocol, that allow you to record the video from any NVR. In the smartphone you need to use CAMHI app to watch in real-time viewing, or to watch the recordings.

For PC Desktop you need to install HIP2P Client, its a free VMS to watch the camera, it also comes with two tools "264 convert" to convert the raw 264 files from camera and "player" that allow to play raw 264 files from camera.

You can also perform advanced camera settings by accessing the camera through the web browser http: //<camera-local-ip-address> or access the recording files at the address http://<camera-local-ip-address/sd (but you need to convert the raw 264 file using the conversion tool or watch using the player that comes with hip2p client)

Hope this helps

Complete garbage camera. Its almost like you made an effort to find the worse garbage, then recommed it. Not to mention that the camera does not meet the op's needs.

 

[mycatjest]

why don't you just go with a hikvision or dahua turret, the hikvision DS-2CD2335FWD-I is a decent camera, decent night vision , Supports microSD/SDHC/SDXC card (128G). you will need ethernet for it though. there's not that many decent wifi based cameras about.

 

[Chartman]

Hi Bill,

I'm testing this security camera TPTEK IP WIFI CAMERA HD1080 from AliExpress, and I'm enjoying a lot. You can put a card up to 64GB for recording. It has ONVIF protocol, that allow you to record the video from any NVR. In the smartphone you need to use CAMHI app to watch in real-time viewing, or to watch the recordings.

For PC Desktop you need to install HIP2P Client, its a free VMS to watch the camera, it also comes with two tools "264 convert" to convert the raw 264 files from camera and "player" that allow to play raw 264 files from camera.

You can also perform advanced camera settings by accessing the camera through the web browser http: /<camera-local-ip-address> or access the recording files at the address http://<camera-local-ip-address/sd (but you need to convert the raw 264 file using the conversion tool or watch using the player that comes with hip2p client)

Hope this helps

I'm interested in this thread- similar to my other post... I need a hip2p compatible camera... is the ID for the TPTEK camera xxxx-123456-abcde ? Same as my Owsoo 801...

 

[ipOsX]

In case you're a Mac user, Hikvision's .mp4 video files are not very compatible. They won't play in Quicktime Player but will open in VLC or Hikvision's proprietary player, VSPlayer - but with no option to convert to a Quicktime-compatible format, and no way to edit them without jumping through hoops. Presumably they do open in Windows Media Player but nothing would surprise me.