Skip to main content

Ingesting video files created by unserialized H2s stuck in a DES incoming folder

Written by Randy Campollo on . Posted in MVI.

Issue: a customer sets up a new or replacement H2 DVR and finds that videos from the unit appear to upload but never show up in DES. Upon investigation, you find that the videos and their associated metadata files are found in a /fbdata/xx/incoming folder and appear to not get ingested as evidenced by DvrVideoInserter log entries, and the filenames include the phrase h2-wbdv.

Cause: DES 4.5.2 and below expects the serial number of the DVR logged in DES and the video metadata files to be identical. As unserialized DVRs use the h2-wbdvxxxxxxxxxx serial format while DES uses the format xxxxxxxxxx, DES becomes unable to ingest the video properly.

Fix Summary: You will need to change the filenames and metadata files to the format expected by DES and allow DES to reingest the files.

1. As a superuser, disable DvrVideoInserter under System Setup > Super User > Service Management before doing anything else.

2. While logged in as root on the OS terminal, use pkill to terminate the DvrVideoInserter process on the server.

Failure to perform the above may cause unexpected behavior during the following steps.

3. Still in the terminal, change your working directory to the server’s /fbdata/xx/incoming folder where the videos are located.

4. Run the following commands to modify the contents of the metadata files:

1.sed -i ‘s/h2-wbdv//g’ *.a
2.sed -i ‘s/h2-wbdv//g’ *.c
3.sed -i ‘s/h2-wbdv//g’ *.d
4.sed -i ‘s/h2-wbdv//g’ *.l
5.sed -i ‘s/h2-wbdv//g’ *.v
6.sed -i ‘s/h2-wbdv//g’ *.h1t
7.sed -i ‘s/h2-wbdv//g’ *.hjt
8.sed -i ‘s/h2-wbdv//g’ *.hj1

5. Run the following commands to modify the filenames of the metadata files and the video/image files:

1.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.a
2.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.c
3.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.d
4.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.c.tmu
5.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.l
6.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.v
7.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.h1t
8.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.mp4
9.rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.jpg
10 rename -v ‘h2-wbdv’ ” *.hj1
6. Repeat the above for all the incoming folders that videos/metadata files are located in.

7. Restart the DvrVideoInserter service in DES and monitor the DvrVideoInserter log to keep track of the progress of ingestion.