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I need a way to scan through hours and hours of recorded video (mp4, mov, avi, doesn't matter, I can fix that) to search for motion. The videos consist of many, many hours of dull nature scenes like bird nests or a feeding site where very little happens for long stretches punctuated by short bursts of action like parents switching, feeding, etc.

I can't use a cctv monitoring program because those monitor a live stream and only record when there's action. These videos are recorded way off the grid where any form of internet connection is a distant dream.

I've looked at Zoneminder and Motion, but these don't allow me to switch the input from a live feed to a file. Ideally, I'd like it to scan a whole lot faster than real-time.

Any ideas?

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  • I'm having the same problem. I tried the VLC filter, didn't work out for me. Did you find a solution?
    – user580266
    Commented Aug 10, 2016 at 10:40
  • Sorry, no, I didn't.
    – Marc
    Commented Aug 11, 2016 at 2:06
  • I am currently working on a windows based software to do this. I will update here once the beta is released in case anyone else needs to do this.
    – HippoDuck
    Commented Sep 29, 2016 at 10:28
  • hello, I have exactly same task. Is there a hope to see a release?
    – Nikita Kipriyanov
    Commented Feb 3, 2017 at 20:03
  • 1
    Related: softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/12097/…
    – Vadzim
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 20:56

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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DVR-Scan

DVR-Scan is a cross-platform command-line (CLI) application that automatically detects motion events in video files (e.g. security camera footage). In addition to locating both the time and duration of each motion event, DVR-Scan will save the footage of each motion event to a new, separate video clip. Not only is DVR-Scan free and open-source software (FOSS), written in Python, and based on Numpy and OpenCV, it was built to be extendable and hackable.

Usage:

dvr-scan -i some_video.mp4 -o some_video_motion_only.avi
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    Works very well, but it's very slow, too. Analysis takes about 20 min for a 1h video, using a quad core i5-7400. That may be fine in a desktop computer, but in a low resource server (like a Raspberry Pi), analysis can perfectly take more time than the actual video.
    – jesjimher
    Commented Jun 19, 2020 at 9:22
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    @jesjimher, try the new CNT option. Also try reducing the data using scale and skip options.
    – Bahram Ardalan
    Commented Jul 18, 2021 at 1:39
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VLC

VLC has a motion detection filter that you can try by accessing: Tools -> Effects and Filters -> Video Effects -> Advanced -> Motion Detect.

screenshot

You might have more tweaks available running it from the command line with the --video-filter=motiondetect flag; check out this example.

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    I'm not understanding what this is supposed to do - I do not see any change in my video playback when I select this option.
    – Michael
    Commented Jun 27, 2020 at 22:11
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    restart vlc after change setting
    – gdbdable
    Commented Aug 18, 2020 at 8:00
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    This highlights changes in the video by overlaying white boxes. This may be helpful, but you still have to watch the video.
    – Christian
    Commented Jan 9, 2021 at 12:58
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    For those not able to find this setting, I am using Version 3.0.16 Vetinari on Mac, and I found the setting under Window -> Video Effects... -> Color -> Motion Detect
    – King Holly
    Commented Sep 6, 2021 at 1:04

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