Exporting recordings from a Wi-Fi bird box camera on a computerUpdated 6 months ago
This guide will show you how to play back recordings from your WiFi Bird Box Camera on your computer and save them in a format that can be easily shared.
Before You Begin
- Connect your camera to your WiFi network, if you have not done so then follow this guide to set the camera up using a phone or tablet or this guide to use your computer to do so.
- Make sure that your camera is set to record video
Let's Get Started
The first thing we want to do is set a save location on your computer for recordings. If you only wish to view recordings that are saved to the camera and do not want to save them permanently on your computer so you can watch them later or share them with others then you can skip this first step.
First open CMS5/VMS and click on System Config. On this page look for Picture Path and Download Path, for each of these options press Browse and select a location on your PC where you would like files to be saved, then press Apply.
Return to the Home screen and press Playback. From this screen we can play or save recordings. Select your camera by ticking the box next to it on the right hand side, select the time frame you want to find recordings from using the Begin and End boxes in the bottom right corner and press Search. You will now see a list of all recordings made between those two times displayed as below.
As you can see there are two types of recordings, what you will see will depend on how you have your camera set. Regular are recordings made in continuous mode, Motion Alarm are recordings made because the camera has detected motion. To watch any recording Double Click on the recording in the list and it will start to play.
To save any recordings to your computer click the Download button, it is highlighted in red on the screenshot above. That recording will then be saved to the location that we set at the start of the guide.
From here we have two ways to play the files. The first requires you to install a specific video player called GB Player. You can download it by clicking here. Once installed open the program, there should be a shortcut created on your Desktop.
Now obviously you won't be seeing the mouse but the overall window will look the same! To play a video you need to drag and drop them from the save folder we set at the start of this process on to the video player. If you are seeing your video in a small square rather than in the full screen like my video above you need to click the button that is highlighted in red on the image.
If you do not wish to use GB Player or want to share the videos with others there is one more step that we need to take. The files from this camera are saved in a format that normal video players are unable to process so we need top convert them.
On CMS5 return to the Home screen and click Backup.
Look for the section shown above. Click Browse next to H264 Record File and navigate to the location we have saved the video files to, this is the location set in the very first step of this guide. Select any of the files and then press Browse next to Save AVI File Path , select a location where you wish to save the converted file and finally press H264 to AVI Convert. You will now find the file you selected has been converted and saved in the chosen location in a format that any standard media player can handle.
If you are not sure which video player to use, I highly recommend VLC which is open source and can play almost any video files with enough tinkering.
Playback Issues
If you find that the converted video files are only playing audio, there are two options.
You can try using the DivX converted/decoder to convert the video files. Make sure to install it first, then re-download the video files, then convert them:
https://www.divx.com/en/software/divx
Or alternatively, download VLC, open it up, then go to:
Tools > Preferences (Show settings: All), > Input & Codecs > Video codecs > FFmpeg. Then locate Threads, and set it to 2, or if that doesn't work change to 1.
Need more help?
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