How to play or convert .dav files?

**MaximB** · October 7th, 2016

Hi,
How can I play or convert (to mp4, ogg, avi ...) .dav files? (dav are video files from a security camera)

Thank You,
Maxim.

**halogen2** · October 7th, 2016

What have you tried so far?

**howefield** · October 7th, 2016

I used the following command to convert a .dav file to .mp4 and although the terminal output contains a few errors the resultant .mp4 plays well enough.

Code:

ffmpeg -y -i ~Downloads/test.dav -vcodec libx264 -crf 24 -filter:v "setpts=1*PTS" ~/Downloads/test.mp4

The command can likely be improved.

**colmax** · October 7th, 2016

Just wonder if vlc may handle it
It tends to work with many codecs
Cheers

**MaximB** · October 7th, 2016

The VLC won't open .dav files.
The converted seems to have worked, however I see only black screen with a date on top (and seconds passing, movie playing) and "Cam 01" at the bottom.
The women who sent me the .dav file said she is able to view the playback from the camera, but we cannot see it after conversion.
Any reason why?

**colmax** · October 7th, 2016

Suggest grab "the all in one codec pack" for vlc
Search "vlc dav codec"
Hope this helps
Cheers

**howefield** · October 8th, 2016

If the file isn't confidential, which it probably is given it is from a securlty camera but if not can it be linked to ?

**licus** · May 18th, 2017

I'd tried the solution of colmax but the output of the program FFmpeg gave me a lot of errors.

I tried in VLC player

Tools – Preferences – Interfaz – All – Demuxers - Video H264 Demuxer - Load

Open first VLC and then load the archive, when I opened the archive first, VLC crashed

I hope this could be helpfull for you

**nerunja** · 1 Week Ago

"Media Player" in Mint Linux 18.3 Slyvia is able to play the .dav files fine by default. The media player shortcut is having the command as "xplayer %U"