ffmpeg conversion .dav to any video files

Question

I am trying for days to convert .dav file (file generated by dvrs [image recorders]). I have tried several variations with ffmpeg and can not succeed.<

Answer 1

ffmpeg doesn't support DAV (yet) as shown by ffmpeg -formats.

The reason why it appears to work for a while is because DAV is a Chinese modified version of H.264/AVC. ffmpeg attempts to guess your input format and it settles on its standard H.264 decoder as the best available match.

The decoding obviously fails at some point since DAV has vendor specific modifications. The format is also proprietary.

You can see this by running the following command:

ffprobe -i input.dav -v debug

The result is:

[h264 @ 0x264ec00] Format h264 probed with size=2048 and score=51

The score is only 51/100.