Combining 2 16 Channel Systems Into 1 32 Channel

[Adam Daley 0]

I had emailed my distributor this but figured the more places I ask this, the better chance someone has an answer:

 

I have a client who has 2 16 channel DVR's. Each DVR has a 10-bay HD array hooked up to it. We sold them a 32 channel system and a 20-bay hd caddy to consolidate everything, and we put a small rack in.

 

Normally id just keep the storage drives, possibly run a repair database and call it a day, no issues. Well the problem here is that its 2 16 channel systems. So that means there are two sets of cam01, cam02, etc… soooo im having a bit of a hard time figuring out how to get their data into the database properly.

 

I did some tests in my office and took a brand new DVR with no data and copied cam15 from my DVR in house. Now I don’t want this to showup as cam15 in the new DVR so what I did was I renamed the folder to cam01. Then I deleted the local database files if any existed, ran the repair database and well… it detected it as cam15 still… so that didn’t help.

 

Do you guys know how geovision stores its files? I really need to get their old data onto the new 32 channel system, but I don't want to have cam01 having tons of files because its merging the two systems into one cam #

[GeoVision_Tate 0]

Hi Adam,

 

You were very close to get it done...

 

In addition to the directory, you also need to rename log avi files stored in the directory.

 

For example:

 

here is where the file is stored

C:\GV2008\cam05\0121\Event20020121212852005.avi

 

lets say you wanna rename cam05 to cam23, then please

rename the directory cam05 to cam23, and

rename the file name from Event20020121212852005.avi to Event20020121212852023.avi

(note the last three characters in the file name is the # of camera)

 

So the whole path will look like

 

C:\GV2008\cam23\0121\Event20020121212852023.avi

 

Then, please run database repair to fix the files

 

Another point is that it will be a tedious process to rename all avi files, so please search online for batch file rename tools.

 

Hope this helps

[Adam Daley 0]

Hmm thats definitly worth looking into. It'll take time. 2 16 channel systems and there are about 10 hard drives for each system (storage arrays). The database repair would take days to run (i know since i had to run it on another system, with only 5 2TB hard drives, took a few days while it repaired everything... they were missing files for some reason)

[Adam Daley 0]

Update. Thanks to the poster above, I was able to salvage some footage. Client needed a weeks worth of old data. So I copied the first DVR onto a blank HD. Renamed each folder from cam01 cam02, etc.. to cam17, cam18 etc...

 

That was the first step. 2nd step was renaming the end of the files. I used a program called "Bulk Rename Utility" i found free on the web, used that. If you ever use it I made the following changes

 

#5 (Remove) i set it to to remove the last 3 digits (theres a box that says "to" that i set to 3, so it stripped the last 3.

#6 (Add) i set this to INSERT 017 for example and set "at pos" to "50" this way it'll put it at the very end, as the files don't go past 50 in length, it'll always put it at end.

 

Then ran it, it processed all my files. I went directory by directory changing 017 to 018, etc...

 

Worked like a charm. Now i can copy the 2nd DVR into the regular cam01 cam02 folders since thats their new position and then import the data over via rebuild