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Here are some links and notes on archiving a UniFi Protect’s footage.

Apparently, the .ubv files just need to be remuxed to .mp4 so they are easily playable. On the UniFi Protect appliances, they have a ubnt_ubvexport and ubnt_ubvinfo binary that can do the remux. You can copy the binary off and run it with QEMU on x86 hardware.

Helpful Links.

https://github.com/danielfernau/unifi-protect-video-downloader

https://github.com/petergeneric/unifi-protect-remux

https://durdle.com/2022/01/22/extract-unifi-protect-video/

RSYNC

We can setup rsync to copy the raw footage off the Unifi Protect appliance. Once we have it locally, we can use the remux tool to convert the files to .mp4 so we can easily view them.

A cool thing about using rsync, is if our copy gets interrupted, we can just rerun the command and it will pick up where it left off without duplicating anything.

The following command is a mouthful. It searches for all the recorded video files for cameras with the MAC addresses specified. (MAC addresses can be found from the web interface), There are only a couple things to change or tweak for the command to work for you.

MAC1 should be the MAC address of camera 1 while MAC2 is the MAC address of the next camera we want to archive.
Change the dst_directory to the archive directory or drive.
And of course we need to change the IP address (10.0.0.1) to the UniFi Protect IP address.

ssh root@10.0.0.1 'find /srv/unifi-protect/video/ \( -name "MAC1*" -o -name "MAC2*" \) -printf %P\\0\\n' | rsync -a -v --exclude="*timelapse*" --files-from=- root@10.0.0.1:/src/unifi-protect/video/ dst_directory/

Here are the details for the commands.

-printf %P\\0\\n : Don’t print the full path, i.e. “/src/unifi-protect/video/”
-name “MAC1*” : Search for recording files that start with camera mac1 address.
-o -name “MAC2*” : Let’s us search for multiple “cameras” add more -o -name “mac3*” etc
rsync
-a : archive mode, copies date, permissions etc.
-v : verbose output. Not needed, but it is nice to see what it is copying.
–exclude=”*timelapse*” : Exclude timelapse files. Remove this if you want to archive them.
–files-from=- : Tells rsync to use the standard input for the list of files to download.
root@10.10.1.1:/src/unifi-protect/video/ : This is the source directory for where the video files are located
/archive/directory : The path where we are archiving the video footage.

Acquire ubnt_ubvinfo from UDM

Before we can use remux, we need to setup a local copy of ubnt_ubvinfo.

You should be able to use the following scp command to copy the ubnt_ubvinfo or ubnt_ubvexport binary from the UniFi Protect appliance.

scp root@10.0.0.1:/usr/share/unifi-protect/app/node_modules/.bin/ubnt_ubvexport ./

To install on Intel or AMD CPU’s, check out the following section on the unifi-protect-remux page.

https://github.com/petergeneric/unifi-protect-remux#quick-start-for-x86-linux

As a side note, it looks like you can download an old x86 version of ubnt_ubvinfo from archive.org. Use at your own discretion.

wget https://archive.org/download/ubnt_ubvinfo/ubnt_ubvinfo

Install unifi-protect-remux

Install ffmpeg

apt install -y ffmpeg

dnf install -y ffmpeg

Now we can download and install remux.

wget https://github.com/petergeneric/unifi-protect-remux/releases/download/v3.0.6/remux-x86_64.tar.gz

tar zxf remux-x86_64.tar.gz

sudo mv remux /usr/bin/

Now we can remux the files.

remux --with-audio=true dst_directory/*.ubv

You will need to script a way to recursively loop through the directories, or just do it manually.

Manually adding the UniFi Protect self signed certificate can be helpful if you are accessing the controller over the local network. It has the benefit of letting your browser remember the password if wanted and not having to verify the certificate.

First we need to acquire the certificate.

Acquire UniFi Protect Certificate

In a Chrome based web browser, go to the IP address of the UniFi Protect NVR

Click in the URL bar where is says “Not secure” -> Certificate -> Details -> Copy to file

Follow the export Wizard. You can use the default settings.

Import Certificate

You can now import the certificate by double clicking on the cert.

Note that it says to install the cert in the “Trusted Root Certification Authorities” store

Import unifi.local cert select Local Machine

Select Trusted Root Certification Authorities

Importing unifi.local to the Trusted Root Certification Authorities

Now we can move on to Configuring the hosts file.

Add unifi.local to system hosts file

We need to add an entry for unifi.local as the cert if for unifi.local hostname and not the controllers IP address.

We’ll essentially be following the same steps outlined in the following post.

Add local DNS entry in Windows

Add local DNS entry for unifi protect

Launch notepad as administrator
Open the hosts file in

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\

Add the following line to the bottom of your hosts file. Change the IP address to the IP of your controller.

192.168.1.20 unifi.local

Save the file.

You should now be set. Open a browser and got to https://unifi.local to access the UniFi Protect Controller.

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How to Archive UniFi Protect Footage