Taking work now — the first look is freeSpinning disks in a machine Quicker still, give us a ring:0203 0868633
ADR Advanced Data Recovery 0203 0868633 Price my job
ADR / Evidence, claims and footage / Exports, wrappers and viewers

Video exhibits · when nothing on the desk will open it

CCTV export that will not play, London. The disc plays nowhere. The file is almost always fine.

£400 + VAT, and back comes a version that plays on any machine, next to your export in the condition it arrived here. The trouble is that CCTV is not ordinary video. Each recorder builds its own wrapper round the picture, indexes it by channel and by hour, then supplies software it wrote for itself. That software expects Windows; a few titles will speak to nothing but the recorder that made the disc; on a Mac nothing happens whatever — which is how a disc ends up in a drawer for a fortnight while a matter waits. What we do about it is dull. Establish the wrapper from the structure of the file, lift the stream into something ordinary, keep your original as it is, hash them both, and record each step so a second examiner can repeat it. The picture is not improved by any of this. Where the system is somebody else's, their permission is needed first.

No fee at all on most jobs if the files do not return Handled as an exhibit from the moment it arrives Each hour the loop covers more of what is left

Talk it over with an engineer, in confidence
0203 0868633

Why will nothing play it?

Not video your computer recognisesYour computer has never met a file of this shape. Each maker wraps the picture in something of its own, marks the streams to a private scheme, and stores frames chronologically rather than grouped per camera. Give that to an ordinary player and the frames get assembled in the wrong order.
What the recorder wrote outSitting in it are the timestamps the unit wrote, with the channel details beside them. Re-encode and both of those go, and a little of the quality with them.
The viewer that came on the discWhat comes with the disc is generally a Windows program placed next to the video. No Mac will run it. A few titles refuse every recorder except their own. And often no viewer was supplied at all — the point at which most discs end up in a drawer, unopened.
What happens to it hereThe wrapper is worked out from the file, the stream moved with no re-encoding, your original left alone, a hash written for each, and every step noted so a second person could repeat the conversion. £400 + VAT. On most work, nothing recovered means nothing to pay.

Format first, then the player, then the clock.

Not listed? Tell us what it does →
What you are shownThe usual reason for itWhere that leaves you
A .dav or .264 file endingVideo wrapped in a proprietary shape the maker never publishedSend the player along too
A disc with no player suppliedCommon enough. We work the wrapper out from the structure withinPost us the whole folder
An .exe for Windows and nothing elseNo good on a Mac, and often no good on a recent PCAsk for a version converted
A phone held up to a monitorFilmed from a screen and re-encoded, it stops being the exhibitGo back and get the export itself
The clock in the boxThey drift, they were often keyed in wrong at fitting, and nobody resets themMeasured against a reference and stated as a figure, never guessed at
How it reaches us:send it by tracked, insured post; Guildford takes it in, and the leg home is on us. Unsure what should travel with it? A call before the box is sealed will get you an engineer who can say what to include and what stays behind. The whole of it is spelled out on theguide to packing and posting.

The sequence we follow.

Other jobs on the log →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on it the day the parcel lands, and an engineer settles what has truly failed before anything else happens — free of charge, and first in the order of work. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNothing owed at this stage
02

Settle what the file really is

A file ending settles almost nothing — .dav, .264, .dat, .vid, occasionally an .mp4 whose insides have been shuffled. What decides it is the structure within. Where the export was encrypted, the password file belonging with it must travel too; lacking that, nothing opens.

The format read from the fileThe file ending tells you almost nothing
03

A version that plays anywhere

Nothing is re-encoded. The stream shifts into a standard wrapper exactly as it stands — none of it added to, none of it discarded — and the file the recorder produced stays here to travel home next to the copy.

The stream copied, not re-encodedYour original left untouched
04

The clock offset gets measured

The clock in the recorder is measured against a reference, and the gap between them recorded. Usually the bulk of it is the seasonal hour. Whatever the gap comes to is written down as a figure, and that saves an argument at a tribunal later.

Checked against a reference clockRecorded as a figure, never estimated
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge whatever. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have read those files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the jobThe post home is ours

What the bench has learned

  • The player is at fault, not the file — an undocumented wrapper holds the H.264 or H.265 stream, its markers follow a scheme the maker invented, and the ordering is chronological instead of per-stream. A general decoder handed that will match frames to the wrong neighbours, then build on the error it has just made.
  • Nor is the manufacturer's viewer an answer — it can change what you are shown without saying so, and the instant it reads beyond the disk index the pictures arrive with no date and no time on them at all.
  • Re-exporting produces a new file, not the original — an AVI made from an H.264 source dropped frames where the hour turned over, while its metadata carried on agreeing with itself. Non-square pixels become widescreen on a monitor, and every proportion in the picture travels with them.
  • Redaction is separate work, and deliberately limited — where a person with no part in the matter must be masked before a clip leaves, a short export has faces and number plates blurred, then leaves carrying an exhibit number of its own, never in place of the master. Hour after hour of multi-camera material is beyond what this bench takes on.

In the parcel: your file precisely as it came; a second version that plays anywhere; a hash for each; the clock gap written as a figure; whatever viewer the maker supplied, or, where none was, a written description of the wrapper; and a note of where the footage began and every pair of hands it has been through afterwards. Page one of the report states, without softening it, that no forensic accreditation is held here — not ISO/IEC 17025, and no UKAS schedule either — and that is better read before you spend money than after. Accreditation of that sort belongs to a statutory Code that reaches criminal proceedings and nothing else, England and Wales only. Instructions in civil, family, employment and insurance matters all fall outside it. On civil instructions the report answers the expert's duty at CPR Part 35.

One job, followed all the way through.

LDN · ADR-2026-3422JOB LOGGED ✓

A licensing hearing two weeks away, and a disc nobody could open

A Camden Town bar with a licensing hearing a fortnight off sent its solicitor four video files and a viewer that refused to install, into a practice running Macs. Working the wrapper out from the files themselves let the stream shift into a format that plays. The export they had been given was left alone and a hash written for each. The clock in the recorder proved more than half an hour fast, never corrected when the season changed, so the gap was stated as a figure and never became a point the other side could raise.

The insurer's claimsigned off and closedExhibit-markedcopy handed over

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Ask for the export, not a cut-down clip
  • Ask for the viewer as well
  • Note the make and model of the recorder
  • Copy the whole folder, not just the video files

What sets us back

  • Converting it repeatedly in the hope it plays
  • Filming a monitor on a phone and calling that the file
  • Renaming the files neatly
  • Expecting conversion to sharpen the picture

The questions that come up first.

Why will nothing on this computer open the disc?

Because what sits on the disc is not video in a form your machine understands. The recorder put the picture within a scheme of its own and labelled the streams privately, so an ordinary player has nothing it can act upon. Nine times in ten the file is sound, and what fails is the software being pointed at it.

The viewer will not install on a Mac.

It was never likely to. Nearly all of these viewers are Windows programs, and a handful refuse to work with any recorder except the one that produced the disc. Send it here and back comes a version that plays on anything, next to your own export in the condition it arrived.

Does converting it sharpen the picture?

It will not, and a firm that suggests otherwise deserves a hard look. Either the camera caught the detail on the night or it did not, and nothing added afterwards invents it. Handled properly the copy matches the recording exactly. Handled carelessly it sheds frames or distorts the geometry, which is why your original goes home with it.

Can I rely on the time stamped into the corner of the frame?

Not much, as a rule. Recorder clocks drift, plenty were keyed in wrongly on fitting day, and very few are ever corrected for the seasonal hour. Here the displayed time is measured against a reference and the difference set down as a figure, so nobody argues the point later.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

What is still on the recorder → A dashcam or a bodycam → What goes into the report → Work that reaches court →

Off the mains first, because that is what protects the evidence.

Whatever holds the evidence, take it off power before anything else — a recorder that is still running overwrites its own oldest material, hour by hour. Send it to us after that. Looking costs nothing; recorder work is £400 + VAT and forensic instructions start at £800 + VAT, both settled in writing beforehand. What sits on that disk stays here.

0203 0868633

Price my job Sending it to Guildford