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I have an ancient program called "Digital Radar" (surveillance software) by Connectix. Connectix developed the original little ball webcam, and was later bought by Logitech. I've tried all of their venues of support, but have been told "We're sorry, but this product is no longer being developed. Thank you for contacting Logitech."

I have numerous videos recorded with this software that I wanted to convert, but can't determine the codec, or any other information about the files. Even "Treasured" was of no help.

While new to programing, I thought if it were possible to crack open the code to at least just find what video formats they were using, that I could get my files into a modern format.

This app broke with the advent of MacOS 9, so I'm looking for an old-timer who knows how to handle something from an 8.6 code base.

I know, it's a long-shot, but any Classic app pros have any ideas of how to revive these vids?

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    Any chance you could post one of the videos on e.g. Dropbox? – Jay Thompson Sep 8 '14 at 22:33
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    Do you still have access to software which is able to play the videos on MacOS 8? Using one of the available emulators would allow you to screengrab the video. – nohillside♦ Sep 9 '14 at 6:37
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    try this site vintagemacmuseum.com/resources/mac-software – Ruskes Sep 9 '14 at 16:01
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"ResEdit" was the basic utility to inspect/edit resources such as images, video, and sound in Mac OS applications and games. It runs in Mac OS or Classic environments and can be downloaded from http://www.mac.org/utilities/resedit/

"ResFork" runs on OS X 10.2 and provides similar functionality to ResEdit.

Using ResEdit or ResFork you should be able to find the codec identifier. You can then usually work from the codec identifier to a video converter. Perhaps focusing on converters from the same timeframe as the application you are working with.

If you don't have a machine that can run a Mac Classic environment, then the emulator "SheepShaver" will be useful as a debug/reverse engineer environment. SheepShaver can be downloaded from: http://sheepshaver.cebix.net/

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  • So I fired up the 8.6 machine, and with ResEdit found Creator:Rdar Type:MooV and in the spot were other videos list things like Cinepak, these had VidecT 32. I didn't find a lot on this codec, and viewers that should play them, didn't seem to do it. Trying to convert them with ffmpeg gave me the errors moov atom not found and Invalid data found when processing input. – LOlliffe Sep 11 '14 at 19:01
  • A quick search found this thread that might be of interest: discussions.apple.com/thread/1762487?start=0&tstart=0 – Andrew Lowe Sep 11 '14 at 23:34
  • Thanks for all of the suggestions. I've tried playing with the codec, etc., but the only thing that seems to view these files is when I get a 8.6 system to boot, and fire up the old app. Now, it's just the tedious process of going through all of them, and exporting them all: File>open, File>Save as, entering a name in the empty field, Select format (from the pull-down), etc. Not to mention that once that's set, the old machine takes about 5x real-time to run the process. – LOlliffe Sep 16 '14 at 18:01

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