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[davewilkes]

I run an isolated truck stop in northern Canada. From time to time the police may request video of our pumps or front counter to verify if someone has passed through. This could be for safety or following a criminal. My problem is that when I get a request for 24 hours of video from 2 cameras, it can take up to 48 hours to convert to a friendly format that they can watch.
Any suggestions on a fast way to convert the video to export to a DVD. Im running it all on a 4 year old beater computer that is a little on the slow side.
Please type slowly, I dont speak tech very well. LOL
Thanks
Dave

[RooKiED]

Hi champ. I'll try to help you but I need some info.
Cams models and resolution? Which codec and encapsulation(file extension) are you exporting to?
Processor model? Only one HD?
How old are the recordings you are usually asked for?

[davewilkes]

I was reading another post regarding conversion to avi or asf. It was replied to that a backup of the files would also place a player in the backup. If this is true I could simply do a backup of the required files and let the police view them on their own computer. Would this be a complete stand alone solution that they would be able to play straight from the backup? Or would they need to install it onto their computer?
Thanks
Dave

[davewilkes]

We are using 920's on an older XP that records to a 1 TB backup drive. The recordings are under a week old. We usually record to avi format so the police dont need to go looking for software. Everything works fine, it is simply the conversion time on so much data that is the problem. Hope thats enough info for you. Thanks for the quick response
Dave

[davewilkes]

Recording extensions are dvf and dvfh

[RooKiED]

It's not your 'old' machine the guilty one, D-ViewCam software is really slow exporting.
I found the following utility. It is clearly unofficial and if it works, it will take some time to process the files too. But it's possible it will take less. If you can identify the database files you want to reconvert (maybe you should look at the file creation date) you could give it a try.
http://bliny.net/blog/post/Converting-D-Link-D-ViewCam-DVF-files-to-AVI.aspx

Stopping DViewCam server (which is demanding) will lower the exporting times.

For the next time:
"Note: The DCS-920 is not capable of Samba recording" 
It's a pity your cams do not support samba recording. This way the cameras would save .avi files to a Samba share (windows share folder over network) while the regular recording on D-ViewCam server worked. You wouldn't need any conversion.
If you upgraded the cams for this purpose and wanted to keep one-two month old recordings you'd have to buy a 250GB disk, install it as the secondary disk on the computer and store there the .avi recordings to avoid putting too much workload on the primary one. Or you could buy a cheap 250GB NAS for the same purpose (network attached storage, it's a little standalone linux server with several functionalities, samba shares obviously one of them) and plug it into the router.

[davewilkes]

Thanks for the reply, I'll try the unofficial utility and see how it works. No problem identifying the files. They are grouped in folders per each day of recording. We normaly do not need large bulk data conversion as we can scroll the files for any info we need (drive aways and store theft) but the police may have only a date that a vehicle went through here. We are the only gas station for 300 km (180 miles) on the only road that goes to the only city in the territory so we are a perfect way to see if a car or certain people went through here.
Still wondering about the backup idea I saw on another post, I'll try that as well.
Thanks again
Dave

[RooKiED]

No problem, glad to help.
Besides, it's a nice contribution to the community you're doing yourself.
If you found a solution please post it here later to help other people in a similar situation.