Clickview file format?

[Jim Ford]

'Clickview' is installed the the school where I work for streaming video file from a server:

http://www.clickview.co.uk/home.php

As the video files show the DivX logo, I assumed that they would be fairly straightforward avi files, playable on most players rather than the Clickview one. I located the data directory on the server which was full of avi files. I downloaded one to try playing it, but found that none of my apps would play it. I then inspected it with Videoinspector and Gspot, but neither could provide any codec information.

Does anyone know what format the Clickview files are in, or can give any pointers to enable me to transcode them so they can be played on VLC (say) , please?

Jim Ford

[foxyshadis]

Any sample files you can post or link to? Not sure how to get to them from there.

[Jim Ford]

Thanks for the reply foxyshadis.

A Clickview video appears to be chopped up into short chapters, with an associated XML file. Here's a link to an xml file:

http://tinyurl.com/39ckkj

and here's a link to the 1st chapter:

http://tinyurl.com/2n8lbz

I'm guessing that although the video stream is DivX, the container is a propriety Clickview format, which means that when all the school's video tapes are transcribed to Clickview, the school will be locked into their software! It would be nice to have the ability to transcribe them to a non-propriety format so we have an 'escape exit' from Clickview if needed!

Jim Ford

[setarip_old]

@Jim Ford

Hi!

1) Your inital posting doesn't make it clear. Has your employer (the school) requested that you try to circumvent the "Clickview" software?

2) Are you (or the school you work at) legally authorized to circumvent the "Clickview" software?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Your sample file definitely is not an AVI file:

[ About file ]

Name: 13548.avi
Date: 24/01/2008 20:37:24
Size: 9,816,906 bytes (9.362 MB)

[ Generic infos ]

File type: data

[ Hex dump ]

00000000: 5d ff c9 cc 30 e8 7a 42 15 23 f7 9c e8 25 42 af |]ÿÉÌ0èzB.#÷.è%B¯|
00000010: a6 c7 b5 f2 28 91 bc 38 2c 0c b0 15 b4 a3 c5 e5 |¦Çµò(.¼8,.°.´£Åå|
00000020: 99 bf f0 cc 28 a5 7d da 9c 9f 65 ff 28 d3 b2 a4 |.¿ðÌ(¥}Ú..eÿ(Ó²¤|
00000030: e8 d3 12 f1 3e 09 95 a3 2d e4 ce b7 7a fa 05 16 |èÓ.ñ>..£-äηzú..|
00000040: 04 f8 2d 68 87 52 c5 94 78 60 41 50 63 5b 98 dd |.ø-h.RÅ.x`APc[.Ý|
00000050: 08 0b 4e 50 65 50 4b da 42 a6 ac 20 a0 f9 47 88 |..NPePKÚB¦¬ .ùG.|
00000060: c3 26 50 9a 92 54 d1 8e 69 a7 e9 77 04 d3 c0 f7 |Ã&P..TÑ.i§éw.ÓÀ÷|
00000070: 67 c1 d5 ee ad ee 25 f1 d2 9b c4 e0 1d bd 1e d8 |gÁÕî*î%ñÒ.Äà.½.Ø|
00000080: 68 86 c3 64 36 d9 93 9f 95 80 09 69 fb 3b 06 d0 |h.Ãd6Ù.....iû;.Ð|
00000090: 6a 33 05 3c 17 b9 cd 95 fc 56 3c 94 3c 01 1b ff |j3.<.¹Í.üV<.<..ÿ|

This report was created by AVInaptic (http://fsinapsi.altervista.org) (18-11-2007) on 24 gen 2008, h 20:41:21

[foxyshadis]

The end is unmistakably an avi index chunk, though, it even starts with idx1. The most likely guess is that it's a headerless avi of some sort, or that the header's encrypted, and you'd really have to reverse engineer the player to really figure out what's going on in there.

[beavemcgeave]

Hi Jim,

Just to clear some things up.

The videos are MPEG4 (DivX) in an avi container although they are encrypted for several reasons.

1. To ensure that our content that is distributed is not illegally copied.
2. To ensure that other media producers content we distribute is also not illegally copied
3. That our software is ScreenRights and ERA compliant

The videos that you add can be extracted so there is no reason to try to decrypt these videos unless you want to illegally copy videos mentioned in the three categories above (one of these was in the xml you posted too).

We give you the option to extract small clips of these anyway under a fair use proviso so why the need to decrypt? Just to see if it can be done?

[setarip_old]

@beavemcgeave

Hi!

Please see my earlier post (#4) to this thread - thusfar not responded to by "Jim Ford".

What, if anything, is your association with "Clickview"?

[beavemcgeave]

I work for them. so yeah, we dont really want our content decrypted.

I should have added that our content is subscription based and that the schools don't own the videos. There are over a 1000 top educational videos (soon to be 600 more from discovery channel) for £1.45/AU$4 per student per year. So the return on investment is over a long period of time.

[setarip_old]

@beavemcgeave

I'm guessing that "Jim Ford" will continue to be unresponsive to my questions and yours ;>}