How to recover videos from an EXE-file of DVR

hemuhemu,

Let me just say upfront ... it is difficult to repair exe files. Not impossible, but very difficult.

I deal with many surveillance / CCTV DVR's and it is not uncommon to export an exe file that contains the video & audio streams where the exe file is actually the proprietary player for the multimedia streams embedded inside the exe file. Another DVR exporting method used by some of the DVR companies is to export a player and proprietary video (w/audio) files. I have only see a couple of these.  The exe file would then execute and call the proprietary video file to load in the player. 

Always download the manual for the DVR and critically read the export video information.  Only way to know the details about how the DVR functions.

The first thing I would do is perhaps do another export from the DVR and see if the export process correctly exports the exe file and also see if there are additional files (even files with file extensions you have never seen before) with the exe file. If you get the extra files, the exe will need those other files to work.  However, that still doesn't mean you don't have a corrupt exe file.  If you have the other proprietary video file(s), you may be able to use them (without the exe) to obtain your video via a tool like ffmpeg or if you don't know how to use CLI ffmpeg, try VLC to play those other files and get your videos.

If no extra files with the exe, that tends to support the hypothesis the multimedia streams are embedded in the exe file with the player program.  Try the new exe file to see if it works.  If not, you will need to try to repair the exe file. 

- Here is a possible problem.  You may try to repair the exe file structure and the exe file runs but does not actually call the embedded multimedia streams correctly (broken link in the call function) so you get a player interface and nothing to play because it doesn't know where the multimedia streams exist inside the exe file.  Had that happen once ... very frustrating. 

--I will give you the way I was lucky enough to do the fix.  It just so happened that the facility had other DVRs with same make, model, software, and one DVR had same version.  I did an export of the exe with the other DVR.  That exe worked.  I then did hexadecimal comparison between my working exe and corrupt exe using 010, HxD, & WinHex hex editors.  010 gave me a great blueprint of what the exe file should look like in the corrupted exe file with the general EXE template data info.  I used HxD to compare the DVR's proprietary player info and pointers to the multimedia streams.  I was very lucky to get the corrupt exe to work.  

One other way, unlikely to work, but you can try, is to try to run CLI ffmpeg against the exe to see if ffmpeg can actually see the multimedia streams inside of the exe file.  If ffmpeg can see the multimedia streams, you can transcode / transmux them to a different file container (e.g., AVI, etc.).  This seldom works and is dependent upon the exe packing method. If this ffmpeg method works, time to buy a lotto ticket ... you are very lucky indeed!

Best of luck in your recovery of the video.

GregW