Formats → Dahua
Dahua DVRs and NVRs, and the many brands that rebadge them. We convert these exports to standard MP4 with a browser-based player, without re-encoding the recorded video.
A .dav file is Dahua's own DHAV container. Most players show nothing at all, and the recorders commonly ship G.711 telephony audio that standard MP4 has no tag for, which is enough to make a naive conversion fail outright.
The usual result is that the footage exists, is perfectly good, and cannot be watched by the person who needs to watch it — because the only software that opens it is the manufacturer's own, it is Windows-only, and the machine it needs to run on is locked down.
Extensions get reused and renamed, so the reliable test is the first few bytes of the file. On any machine, without installing anything:
xxd -s 0 -l 16 "your-file.dav" # macOS / Linux
certutil -dump "your-file.dav" # WindowsA Dahua export begins 44 48 41 56 — the ASCII characters "DHAV", Dahua's container.
Filenames carry the channel and a 14-digit timestamp, e.g. NVR_ch1_main_20240101120000_….dav. One file per channel per clip is the normal export shape, and a channel spanning several clips has to be joined in time order rather than the order the disk lists them.
Could not find tag for codec pcm_mulaw in stream #1 — the recorder's G.711 telephony audio, which MP4 has no tag for. A plain remux dies on it even though the video is fine.
Clips belonging to one channel are joined in recorded order rather than the order the disk happens to list them, which is not the same thing.
Read by ffmpeg's DHAV demuxer, natively.
Native demux, one file per channel, concatenated in time order where a camera spans several clips. Where the audio cannot go into MP4 as it stands it is re-encoded and said so — the video is still copied bit for bit.
The coded video itself is copied, never re-encoded. That is the point: what you receive is the recorded image, not a compressed copy of it.
One standard MP4 per camera, a browser player with every camera on a shared timeline, and a certificate digesting the coded picture data before and after — which match, because the video is copied rather than re-encoded. What every conversion includes → · How the check works →
One credit converts up to 4.7 GB. Your first conversion is free. Pricing →
Not sure whether yours will convert? Send us one .dav export that has given you trouble. We will tell you whether it converts, usually the same day, and there is no charge for finding out.
Try it — first conversion free or email enquiries@veriframe.co.uk
Dahua DVRs and NVRs, and the many brands that rebadge them. A .dav file is Dahua's own DHAV container. Most players show nothing at all, and the recorders commonly ship G.711 telephony audio that standard MP4 has no tag for, which is enough to make a naive conversion fail outright.
Because it is a proprietary Dahua format. General-purpose players such as VLC, Windows Media Player and QuickTime are not built to read it and usually show nothing or refuse the file. In practice: Could not find tag for codec pcm_mulaw in stream #1 — the recorder's G.711 telephony audio, which MP4 has no tag for. A plain remux dies on it even though the video is fine.
As it stands, .dav opens only in Dahua's own player, which is Windows-only and often has to run on a locked-down machine. The dependable way to open it anywhere — any operating system, no install — is to convert it to MP4, which is what we do. The recorded video is copied, not re-encoded, so what you watch is the recorded image itself.
Send us the .dav export — ideally the whole folder as the recorder wrote it. We convert it to standard MP4, one file per camera, with a browser player and a certificate that digests the coded picture before and after so the result can be verified independently. The first conversion is free. If it turns out not to convert, we may ask for the player it shipped with so we can make it work.