.MJP files?

[David Lowy]

A friend of mine recently had his iPad stolen from a store which subsequently provided him with surveillance videos.   The files are in .MJP format, presumably Motion JPEG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .

Does anyone have any free software that can read them, preferably on Mac OS X?

Send me an email off-list if you want a sample file  and I'll add you to a shared Dropbox folder. 

Cheers, 

Dave

P.S. Bonus marks if someone can transcode these into a format he can view on his replacement iPad. 

[Tom Keddie]

VLC lists MJPEG.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.php?cat=video

[David Lowy]

I tried VLC 2.0.0 first,  and it skips over it to the next video in the queue like it isn't even there. 

Dave

[Vincent van Haaff]

quicktime + perian? 

but thats generally the same as vlc.

[David Lowy]

Tried it second. :-)

I  will add you to Dropbox's shared list, Vincent

David Lowy

[Stefan Wiswedel]

If I were at home I could try convert it on some of the file converters I have on my Mac. Not sure when I will be able to try but you can add me to and will see what I can do if it hasn't been solved ...

[Derek Anderson]

Take a peek at it in a jpeg editor like photoshop. I might just be a
train of lo-res jpg images without a container. Check if the first 2
bytes are d8ff, or if the word JFIF repeats over and over in the file.
If so you can split it on the bytes d8ff (that's the first 2 bytes of
every image).

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[Vincent van Haaff]

this is the final word for me:

Wish i had the time to do something more. tried it in photoshop, vlc, qt + perian, mplayerx. at that point i start looking at ffmpeg + imagemagick fu.

[Matthew Smith]

I can try some *nix tools.

m

[Jonathan Bierman]

I can probably do this. how big is the Motion JPEG file? if less than 2gb, just use wetransfer.com to send it to me (jonathan...@gmail.com) and yes, I can encode a .m4v for the guy's iPad :) as well as pretty much any other format (I'm a video editor)

Jon

[Matthew Smith]

Cool, FCP could maybe do it. I'll try later tonight when I got home, but so far avidemux doesn't know what to do with it. I found a linux toolkit that appears to solve the issue but i need to compile, so will try that tomorrow if noone has found a solution.

m

[Jonathan Bierman]

There's a good chance that MPEG Streamclip will be able to load it and convert to a ProRes 422, at which point it's a doddle to convert to any number of Apple and web-friendly codecs using Compressor.

Jon

[Stefan Wiswedel]

Sure they are video? Files are so small ...

[Derek Anderson]

If nobody has unlocked it by tomorrow, add me to the dropbox, and I'll
see if I can write a script that extracts the jpg frames directly.

[Matthew Smith]

That's probably the winning ticket. Looks like it could be from an LG
product, which encodes the video files uniquely to the firmware.

[Chris P. Denton]

if its a high def file could you try renaming it as a .mkv? or mpeg?

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[David Lowy]

[I just found this draft unsent. Oops excuse  the delay!] 

Thanks Vincent,  for the excellent rundown of what has been tried. 

I don't have ffmpeg installed but it has been suggested. Anyone?  

I forgot all about imagemagick!     I have seen it do wonders converting stills to videos, and extracting frames from videos. I'd love to see this tried too. 

I don't know what gear created the files, but I suppose there is the possibility that there is some proprietary crap (or worse encryption) that would make this difficult,  perhaps more so than it is worth to us good samaritans. 

Thanks to all for your efforts so far!

David Lowy

P.S. John and Matthew: I added you to the dropbox shared folder. 

P.P.S  [  I  also added others since I composed this reply. If someone needs access to the files please let me know]

On 2012-07-12, at 3:00 PM, Vincent van Haaff wrote:

this is the final word for me:

<Screen Shot 2012-07-12 at 2.58.31 PM.png>

[David Lowy]

On 2012-07-12, at 10:21 PM, Stefan Wiswedel wrote:

Sure they are video? Files are so small ...

I agree. 

It is supposed to be surveillance video but as of now the files' content and format are still a mystery. 

A low frame-rate series of  stills would be my guess, kind of like you see in some crime-stoppers videos. 

As has been said, it would be really useful to know the gear or software that create the files....

Dave

[Derek Anderson]

The files use the proprietary MJP format by 3xLogic, and are not Mjpeg
at all. The player code is available for download here:
http://www.3xlogic.com/software and should afterward play back on
windows media player.

/me used hexdump to figure that crap out. The files contain a
reference to VIGIL technology DVR, which uses the proprietary codec,
and which is mentioned as having the MJP format on the 3xLogic
download page (only once, on one page, on the whole damn internet
afaict).

They play perfectly for me under wine in that app above btw :)

[Derek Anderson]

Aaand it looks like the very first video has footage of a guy coming
in without anything in his hands, and the very last video shows the
same guy leaving _with_ something that looks a lot like an ipad.
Maybe. Kinda fuzzy, but I'll leave the decision to the owner of the
device.

[Stefan Wiswedel]

Good work :)

[David Lowy]

Awesome work, Derek!

I can't wait to see it .

Thanks to everyone who pitched in!

Dave

[Tom Keddie]

I think you can see him slipping the ipad into a newspaper in video 4.

Seems like whoever chose the footage targeted this guy.

You get a good view of his car in the first video too (no plates though).

[David Lowy]

Looking forward to seeing the vids. I have the space in my Dropbox folder if anyone wants to upload all of them. (Derek says player exports to AVI).

Can you see the victim ( grey hair and beard)? As he explained it to me, he put his iPad down to look at a flyer and may have put the flyer down on top of the iPad. If that is true, he made it easy to forget and easy to steal. :-(

Dave

[Stephen Young]

Sounds like a "distance alarm" market to me!

SDY

---

From: David Lowy <Da...@Lowy.com>
To: vhs-g...@lists.hackspace.ca
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2012 3:58:21 PM
Subject: Re: .MJP files?

[David Lowy]

Indeed.  A couple years ago I sketched out the broad strokes for such an idea that Apple or a third party company could make a billion with.  Company provides free app or iOS update that works with any jewellery (e.g. rings and watches) or clothing fitted with company's technology, which would be licensed to third party manufacturers. 

I am surprised nobody has done this yet (or have they?).  

Anyone want to investigate starting this with me? I have successfully started and sold tech companies before and am currently reviewing projects for next 5 years.

Dave

[Derek Anderson]

/me giggles at the idea of wirelessly bricking ipads using some NFC variant.