Trouble downloading video from NVR? Change recording length to minimum (30 mins)

Ben L

I had about 5 hours of footage from four cameras I wanted to download (to make a time-lapse montage). You may already know that the phone app and web UI are limited to downloading no more than a few minutes of video, you're supposed to use the PC app.

I did - latest version 8.7.1 - but had very unreliable results. The direct 'download' function plain didn't work - it would claim success but each video segment was cut short, usually by more than half.

I found partial success by using the 'snip/trim/scissors' function to select the period of interest in the playback window, then select download; this seems to work at least some of the time. It can take a few attempts (3 or more), but the files were downloaded to the PC. Unfortunately these videos are only the low-resolution stream - 640 × 480.

I then changed the recording length to the minimum of 30 minutes (was 60) and that seems to have made a big improvement for new footage since the length change - the entirety of the full-resolution files now download directly (don't have to use the 'snip' tool).

[update]: well, ymmv... some other downloads just failed, so it seems to still be unreliable