DVR Splitter 1.9.1.40

DAV and HXVS files come off CCTV recorders, and Windows has no idea what to do with them.

The video inside is ordinary H.264 or H.265, so this is not a missing codec problem at all.

It is the container, and DVR Splitter is the small DirectShow filter that opens it.

First, Check Whether You Need It

Two minutes here can save you an install.

DVR Splitter is a component of MPC-BE, which means MPC-BE already contains it. If you open your recording in MPC-BE and it plays, you are finished and nothing on this page applies to you.

Try VLC too, for the opposite reason. VLC does its own container handling and ignores DirectShow filters completely, so it either opens the file already or this filter will not change that either way.

Install the standalone filter when you want these files to open in something else: MPC-HC, an older player, a thumbnail handler in File Explorer, or any DirectShow application that is not MPC-BE.

What DAV, DHAV and HXVS Actually Are

Two container families, not three, and the naming causes most of the confusion.

• DAV and DHAV are the same thing. .dav is the file extension Dahua recorders write, and DHAV is the signature inside the file.
• HXVS is the signature used by KKmoon and a range of other budget recorders built on HiSilicon chipsets, sold under dozens of brand names.

Dahua is one of the two largest CCTV manufacturers in the world, and a great many recorders sold under other names are Dahua hardware underneath, so the .dav extension turns up far more often than the brand does.

Both containers carry ordinary compressed video, usually H.264 and increasingly H.265. Nothing exotic is going on inside them, which is why the fix is a parser rather than a decoder. If the distinction is new to you, our guide to what a container format is is the shortest way in.

Where It Sits in the Chain

DirectShow playback runs in three stages, and knowing which one is failing tells you what to install.

• A splitter opens the container and separates the video and audio streams inside it.
• Decoders turn those streams back into pictures and sound.
• Renderers put the result on screen and through the speakers.

DVR Splitter owns the first stage only. A file that will not open at all points at the splitter, whereas a file that opens with picture but no sound means the splitter worked and an audio decoder is missing.

Once the streams are separated, whatever decoders you already have take over, and nothing needs to know the file came from a camera.

Installing and Setting It Up

Run the installer and the filter registers itself with Windows automatically. One download covers 32-bit and 64-bit, the files land in System32 and SysWOW64, and there is no folder to choose and no reboot.

Most players will now pick it up on their own. If one does not, it usually needs telling explicitly.

In MPC-HC or MPC-BE, open View, then Options, then External Filters, add the filter if it is not listed, and set it to Prefer so the player routes DAV and HXVS files through it rather than falling back to something less capable.

In PotPlayer, the equivalent is Preferences, Filter Control, Source/Splitter. KMPlayer handles it through the Filter Manager in its Preferences panel.

For the manual route, or if you would rather register the filter yourself, our guide on installing and uninstalling DLL and AX files covers it.

Completing the Chain

The splitter does not decode anything, so something has to handle the H.264 or H.265 stream it hands over.

LAV Filters is the pairing to use, with hardware-accelerated decoding through DXVA2 and D3D11. That matters more here than on ordinary video, because surveillance recordings are often long, high-resolution and left running unattended.

The two operate at different stages and do not conflict, so install order does not matter. If you would rather not assemble components at all, the K-Lite Codec Pack supplies the decoder layer in one installer, and the wider codec packs section covers the alternatives.

Note that no codec pack includes DVR Splitter, so this stays a separate install whichever route you take.

When It Still Will Not Play

There is one failure this filter cannot fix, and it is worth knowing before you spend an evening on it.

If the file is not encrypted and still fails, work out what is actually inside it before installing anything else. Our Codec Finder reports the streams in a file, and the Codec Troubleshooter works through the usual causes in order.

Both run in the browser with nothing uploaded, which makes them a faster first move than adding another filter and hoping.

Converting to MP4 for Archiving

If you want to keep or send the footage rather than just watch it, convert it, and do not install anything for this.

FFmpeg reads DAV files directly using its own built-in support. It does not use DirectShow filters to read files, so DVR Splitter is neither needed nor involved, and this works whether or not you installed it.

Remuxing to MKV is the safest target, because it copies the streams without re-encoding and accepts whatever the recorder wrote. MP4 is fussier about stream timing and sometimes needs a re-encode to come out playable.

If a command line is not how you want to spend the evening, HandBrake re-encodes to MP4 or MKV through an interface, at the cost of a generation of quality.

Quick questions

The Rest of the Family

The same project builds a splitter for most other containers, all at roughly this version and all about this size.

• Matroska Splitter covers MKV, MKA, MKS and MK3D, which is where surveillance footage usually ends up once remuxed.
• AVI Splitter handles AVI and OpenDML files that the built-in Windows splitter mishandles.
• MPC Raw Video Splitter reads raw and uncompressed streams with no container at all.
• Ogg Splitter covers Ogg and OGM files.

The full range of filters and decoders is in the Video Codecs section, and the capability dates quoted above come from the project's own MPC-BE changelog: HXVS support arrived in 1.5.2, full DAV and DHAV support in 1.5.3, and the KKmoon format in 1.5.6.

Download DVR Splitter 1.9.1.40 and see whether it opens your recordings, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.