invalid MP4 recording created by camera (IP4M-1041)

[aviegas]

I have a few IP4M-1041 all set up to save recordings to a local NAS (TrueNAS).
As I'm writing a program to search and playback the video files, I noticed that some of the MP4 files created have problems. The interesting is that the same camera can create files with all the problems listed here.

- Some files don't have the audio stream. Just the video stream. It will play correctly.
- Some files are missing the "moov atom". As far as I understand AMCREST cameras will record the MP4 without the moov atom and will only add it once the recording of the segment is done and close the file (and the MP4_ extension is renamed to just MP4). I'm not talking about the "in progress" file with the MP4_ extension. I'm talking about MP4 extension files that are supposed to be completed.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[longedge]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

I have occasionally come across recorded files from my cameras (not sure whether that was on MSD, my NAS, or my PC - I've used all at one time or another) that may well have been malformed in the way you describe but I've never tried troubleshooting them, they just got deleted.

I haven't got one to 'play around' with at the moment but I wonder whether you've tried a repair using HANDBRAKE. I use it mainly to reduce filesize of videos after rendering but there's an outside chance it might help here. Another option that comes to mind when thinking about a repair would be to use VLC Media Player to convert/save the file.

As to the problem with cameras not finalising videos correctly, I'm afraid that I've got no idea what's going on there.

[aviegas]

Thanks for the comment.
Just checked if Handbrake could open the files, and, unfortunately, it's a no go.
A quick exam shows that a bit more than 1/2 of the files are corrupted, from all 6 cameras. Cameras are connected to differente WiFi APs.
One possible problem may be the NFS server, but I doubt, as it's a TrueNAS Scale running on a large server (AMD EPYC with tons of memory). But I'm going to try FTP on one of the cameras.

[longedge]

Just another thought and forgive what is probably a silly question but have you checked that the affected files are not zero byte. It just occurred to me because it's a problem that I've come across myself.

[aviegas]

Nope, checked that: they all have a non-zero file size.

I tried moving one of the cameras to an alternate server (QNAP), to see if it was a problem with my TrueNAS box. The problem persists. Some of the generated MP4 files are not readable.

I'm trying to test FTP as an option, but can get it even to start recording. There seems to be a problem with FTP connections and the FTP client on both servers, but they all use the same FTP server software (ProFTPD) and there are several reports that the AMCREST cameras simply don't work with this server (come on, FTP? It's a simple and dumb protocol).

I'm inclined to say that the only options that work reliably are the SD card and Cloud...