Does anyone know of any good, reasonably fast software to scan through a load of video files. Hours/weeks of footage to sift out any motion detected reasonably quickly. Preferably with a GUI.
I have tried a few, and DVR-SCAN seems to do a decent job, but it’s very slow, and without the GUI, I need to manually open every video file that it has saved (taking up a ton of space) to see if they have what i am looking for.
Ideally free software, as I am broke. But if there are good recommended paid options I will happily consider them, My head is close to exploding digging through these. I am using Linux Mint, but will happily use any distro that may help me better. Hopefully this post it allowed here, if not could someone please point me in the right direction. Thanks.
Hey, someone already gave you the right answer, which is ffmpeg.
I handle dozens of cameras and their video. I may be able to help you set your expectations appropriately.
You do not need a gui. You would not feel more comfortable with a gui. There are so many options, methods and process available just within the ffmpeg package that you would be overwhelmed.
“Reasonably fast” to me is seven times faster than the source material. That means it would take ffmpeg a day to go through a weeks worth of footage and dump out the parts with motion. That takes a very fast computer with lots of ram.
Consider locating some footage with a few different sections of motion, feeding it into ffmpeg and making sure you get the output you want (files appropriately sized, time stamped, etc) then calculating how long it would take to do all your footage that way.
Not only will working with a smaller, “known” section help you figure out how to do it and get it right, it will help you figure out if you need to rent time on a server or something to get the whole job done faster.
E: I am trying to get you to do a test section in order to find out how fast your system will perform. Different factors like media speed, ram size, hardware acceleration and system load will have a significant impact.
Thanks, I will look at it. If I am being honest I didn’t expect answers so quickly as I have looked before but didn’t get any great results. I am away for a week so will have to look when I get back. Thank again.
I have to wonder if there’s a faster way than literally decoding the video and analyzing the decoded frames, if that’s how you’re doing it with ffmpeg. Video compression revolves around motion estimation so maybe it’s possible to just scan the file and find frames where the motion vectors (the data saying how the stuff in the picture is changing at a given frame) suddenly get larger. I assume this is for something like a security video that usually shows a static picture, and OP wants to flag when someone enters the room. In that case there will be almost no motion most of the time, and suddenly there will be some.