Hikvision Nvr

Pulling video off a Hikvision DVR or NVR is one of those tasks that takes ten minutes when it should take ten seconds. You log into the web UI, navigate menus, pick a channel, scrub through the timeline, hope the export dialog cooperates, and remux the file because the export format is broken on your firmware. Every. Single. Time.

This skill removes all of that. After a one-time setup, you just tell your AI agent what footage you want, in plain English:

• "Pull the lobby camera footage from 8 to 9 PM yesterday."
• "Get me last Tuesday's loading-dock camera, 2:30 to 3:00 PM."
• "I need channel 7 from the warehouse NVR for the overnight hours."

Your agent hands the request to the skill, the skill goes and gets the footage, and you get back a clean MP4 file. No menu navigation, no ISAPI XML, no ffmpeg flags, no "why is this video broken" troubleshooting. You keep working while it downloads in the background.

What it handles for you, so you don't have to think about it

• Speaks Hikvision's ISAPI protocol natively; falls back to RTSP when the NVR throttles
• Works around firmware quirks that cause other tools to return wrong segment data
• Clips the result to exactly the time window you asked for
• Verifies the file (codec, resolution, duration, on-screen timestamp) before reporting back
• Stores credentials in your OS keychain; nothing sensitive on command lines or in logs

Validated end-to-end on

DS-9016HWI-ST, DS-7316HQHI-SH, DS-7716NI-I4/16P, DS-9632NI-ST, and DS-7716NI-SP/16, with firmware spread from V3.1.10 through V4.50.000.

Who this is for

Security teams pulling evidence clips on demand. IT integrators automating routine exports for clients. Property managers who shouldn't have to learn ISAPI. Anyone with a Hikvision (or compatible OEM) fleet who'd rather say what they want than wrestle with the export dialog.

Note for reviewers

The skill shells out to ffmpeg and ffprobe (standard install dependencies, documented in INSTALL.md and SECURITY.md) for remuxing and verification. All subprocess.run calls pass argument arrays. The single shell=True invocation in launch_setup.py uses only Python-controlled paths; full rationale in SECURITY.md.