Converting h265 files to something playable

[Victor Engel]

I recently got myself a Green-Backyard bird box camera. I'm trying to find a good solution to download videos to my Mac. I've installed the recommended iOS app which is called Green Backyard. It can play videos and use AirPlay to play it on my Mac, but what I really want is to download the videos so I can edit them with sound.
There's a Mac version (really WIndows software, I think, using one of the frameworks that lets it run on Macs) of VMS that allows to connect to the camera. It has a download function, but the files downloaded have an extension of .h265 and are not playable on the Mac. Can these simply be added to a container rendering them playable? How do I do that?
Here's a sample video created by using AirPlay and using Quicktime to record the screen. There were a bunch of clips, which I edited together rather clumsily, because the app broadcasting the video doesn't play each clip automatically in sequence. I have to start each manually, so I had to edit out all the screen changes when going from one clip to another.
I've changed the camera settings to not use motion detection but to simply record 24/7. I have another camera (security camera outside the box) that I can use to determine what times to look at. The software for it can download playable videos.

The URL to the sample is

(still processing as I write this, but should be available soon)

 

[tke918]

I recently got myself a Green-Backyard bird box camera. I'm trying to find a good solution to download videos to my Mac. I've installed the recommended iOS app which is called Green Backyard. It can play videos and use AirPlay to play it on my Mac, but what I really want is to download the videos so I can edit them with sound.
There's a Mac version (really WIndows software, I think, using one of the frameworks that lets it run on Macs) of VMS that allows to connect to the camera. It has a download function, but the files downloaded have an extension of .h265 and are not playable on the Mac. Can these simply be added to a container rendering them playable? How do I do that?
Here's a sample video created by using AirPlay and using Quicktime to record the screen. There were a bunch of clips, which I edited together rather clumsily, because the app broadcasting the video doesn't play each clip automatically in sequence. I have to start each manually, so I had to edit out all the screen changes when going from one clip to another.
I've changed the camera settings to not use motion detection but to simply record 24/7. I have another camera (security camera outside the box) that I can use to determine what times to look at. The software for it can download playable videos.

The URL to the sample is

(still processing as I write this, but should be available soon)

According to this site, ffmpeg can convert h265 files to other format.

.H265 File Extension - How to open .h265 files

Verified information about the .h265 file format and a list of apps that open .h265 files.

fileinfo.com

(The owl is very cute)

 

[Sean Nelson]

...the files downloaded have an extension of .h265 and are not playable on the Mac.

Is that literally the end of the file name, as in "Clip005.h265"? ".h265" is not a normal file extension for video clips, try changing it to ".mov" or ".mp4" to see if that makes it playable.

 

[Victor Engel]

...the files downloaded have an extension of .h265 and are not playable on the Mac.

Is that literally the end of the file name, as in "Clip005.h265"? ".h265" is not a normal file extension for video clips, try changing it to ".mov" or ".mp4" to see if that makes it playable.

Yes, the extension is .h265 - it does not work when simply changing the extension. I'm thinking the camera is essentially producing a stream, and these files are simply portions of the stream, so it needs the appropriate header information, etc., to be added. Here is a sample file. I hope the link works.

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

 

[tke918]

...the files downloaded have an extension of .h265 and are not playable on the Mac.

Is that literally the end of the file name, as in "Clip005.h265"? ".h265" is not a normal file extension for video clips, try changing it to ".mov" or ".mp4" to see if that makes it playable.

Yes, the extension is .h265 - it does not work when simply changing the extension. I'm thinking the camera is essentially producing a stream, and these files are simply portions of the stream, so it needs the appropriate header information, etc., to be added. Here is a sample file. I hope the link works.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/871a...ey=d5ajjal2too3ub6lv7mcbyr9a&st=nk4pmeq0&dl=0

I could convert it to mp4 with ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i input_file.h265 -c copy out.mp4

Proton Drive

Securely store, share, and access your important files and photos. Anytime, anywhere.

drive.proton.me

 

[Victor Engel]

...the files downloaded have an extension of .h265 and are not playable on the Mac.

Is that literally the end of the file name, as in "Clip005.h265"? ".h265" is not a normal file extension for video clips, try changing it to ".mov" or ".mp4" to see if that makes it playable.

Yes, the extension is .h265 - it does not work when simply changing the extension. I'm thinking the camera is essentially producing a stream, and these files are simply portions of the stream, so it needs the appropriate header information, etc., to be added. Here is a sample file. I hope the link works.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/871a...ey=d5ajjal2too3ub6lv7mcbyr9a&st=nk4pmeq0&dl=0

I could convert it to mp4 with ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i input_file.h265 -c copy out.mp4

https://drive.proton.me/urls/CSGHYTM5G0#9qKokZJZF8aI

I haven't found a version for Apple Silicon macs

 

[Edoardo L]

You can use Shutter Encoder (free software) to convert the video to the format you prefer.

 

[Victor Engel]

You can use Shutter Encoder (free software) to convert the video to the format you prefer.

Thanks. I'm trying it out. The interface is not very intuitive. It also seems to be extremely slow. Looking at the Activity Monitor, it's using ffmpeg, which, as of now is using 840% of the CPU. My computer has 14 cores (10 performance and 4 efficiency) and 32 graphics cores.

It's taking several minutes per file for something that I would expect to take a fraction of a second.

 

[Victor Engel]

You can use Shutter Encoder (free software) to convert the video to the format you prefer.

Thanks. I'm trying it out. The interface is not very intuitive. It also seems to be extremely slow. Looking at the Activity Monitor, it's using ffmpeg, which, as of now is using 840% of the CPU. My computer has 14 cores (10 performance and 4 efficiency) and 32 graphics cores.
It's taking several minutes per file for something that I would expect to take a fraction of a second.

I figured it out. Instead of selecting an output codec of h.265 (which is the same as input format), I just needed to select Rewrap, with output set to mp4. That worked about as quickly as I expected.

 

[Victor Engel]

You can use Shutter Encoder (free software) to convert the video to the format you prefer.

Thanks. I'm trying it out. The interface is not very intuitive. It also seems to be extremely slow. Looking at the Activity Monitor, it's using ffmpeg, which, as of now is using 840% of the CPU. My computer has 14 cores (10 performance and 4 efficiency) and 32 graphics cores.
It's taking several minutes per file for something that I would expect to take a fraction of a second.

I figured it out. Instead of selecting an output codec of h.265 (which is the same as input format), I just needed to select Rewrap, with output set to mp4. That worked about as quickly as I expected.

FWIW, here's my first video combining clips from out side the owl box with clips from inside the owl box. The ones from inside the owl box were the ones that were available to me only as h265 files.

There were way more issues than that.

I'm pretty satisfied with the first attempt:

There was minimal editing here (and no sound production). The biggest issue so far is that the camera had defaults set to record video when recognizing movement. This resulted in way too many clips. I've since changed the settings to NOT record clips from detected movement, since it records 1 hour clips anyway. I already have a process to check when an owl is in/near the box by taking still photos every 15 seconds. I can use that to determine which 1 hour clips(s) are interesting.
Another annoying issue this time, probably mostly because this happened on the day daylight saving time kicked in, is that the external camera converted to DST before the internal camera did - so the times are out of sync by an hour.

P.S. I recommend watching this at 2x natural speed (or faster). Not much was trimmed out, and these owls stay still for longish periods and take a long time to eat.

--
Victor Engel

 

[Htbaa]

...the files downloaded have an extension of .h265 and are not playable on the Mac.

Is that literally the end of the file name, as in "Clip005.h265"? ".h265" is not a normal file extension for video clips, try changing it to ".mov" or ".mp4" to see if that makes it playable.

Yes, the extension is .h265 - it does not work when simply changing the extension. I'm thinking the camera is essentially producing a stream, and these files are simply portions of the stream, so it needs the appropriate header information, etc., to be added. Here is a sample file. I hope the link works.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/871a...ey=d5ajjal2too3ub6lv7mcbyr9a&st=nk4pmeq0&dl=0

I could convert it to mp4 with ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i input_file.h265 -c copy out.mp4

https://drive.proton.me/urls/CSGHYTM5G0#9qKokZJZF8aI

I haven't found a version for Apple Silicon macs

You can install ffmpeg with homebrew/brew. Or if you want something with a graphical user interface try Handbrake or Apples Compressor (paid solution).

 

[Victor Engel]

...the files downloaded have an extension of .h265 and are not playable on the Mac.

Is that literally the end of the file name, as in "Clip005.h265"? ".h265" is not a normal file extension for video clips, try changing it to ".mov" or ".mp4" to see if that makes it playable.

Yes, the extension is .h265 - it does not work when simply changing the extension. I'm thinking the camera is essentially producing a stream, and these files are simply portions of the stream, so it needs the appropriate header information, etc., to be added. Here is a sample file. I hope the link works.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/871a...ey=d5ajjal2too3ub6lv7mcbyr9a&st=nk4pmeq0&dl=0

I could convert it to mp4 with ffmpeg

ffmpeg -i input_file.h265 -c copy out.mp4

https://drive.proton.me/urls/CSGHYTM5G0#9qKokZJZF8aI

I haven't found a version for Apple Silicon macs

You can install ffmpeg with homebrew/brew. Or if you want something with a graphical user interface try Handbrake or Apples Compressor (paid solution).

I'm using Shutter Encoder mentioned earlier in this thread. It uses ffmpeg internally.