CALLING ALL TECHIES
Afternoon all,

Knowing the amount of techies that lurk in these waters, I thought this might be the best place to ask for help (I'm not stupid enough to venture onto talk). Anyways, I have some CDs of some voice recordings that were given to my firm by our client's previous solicitors. They're all .hvc, which as far as I can tell is Hot-Eye Video codec. I need to listen to these asap, but I'm struggling to get a demo downloaded for the codec, all the sites I've tried have ended with errors and no download. Can anyone help please?

Thanks

EDIT: VLC does not want! What I think I'm looking for is a reputable site that'll allow me to download the Hot-Eye Protector program, if anyone knows of it?
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 14:50, 17 replies, latest was 16 years ago)

Hello :)
Try downloading VLC media player, do a search for it on Download.com

That'll play nearly anything without needing codecs.
Good luck!
( Cawl, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:00, Reply)

As Kaol said
VLC player is the best one for the job. It also has the handy ability to get around most IT policies as it isn't an installable app, it's a handy little standalone that will happily run from a pen drive.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:03, Reply)

Thanks
VLC's not having it. Apparently it'll only play through a Hot-Eye player because it's an encryption based program. Thanks though
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:03, Reply)

there's no point in my adding this
but I agree. Use VLC
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:03, Reply)

Oh balls
If VLC won't do it, I'm all out of ideas I'm afraid :(
( Cawl, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:07, Reply)

stupid proprietary formats
I'll have a look, I'm bored
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:30, Reply)

A bit of Googling reveals
that it seems more of an encryption standard than a codec. You'll need a decrypt key as well as a player to play them I think.

Presumably this is why solicitors have used it, to stop the wrong people listening to it?
(Son of Sam-i-am We're all as mad as hatters here, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:31, Reply)

I'd start looking at contracts
And see if they're obliged to provide these in a listenable format. Would make things a lot easier.

They must have the key and player though, if they encrypted it in the first place?
(Son of Sam-i-am We're all as mad as hatters here, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:37, Reply)

my googling
reveals the same as Miasma has discovered.

Couldn't find anything that looked like an easy way to decrypt or even a free player.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:43, Reply)

No, I couldn't even find a player link
Which indicated that you're supposed to get given it along with the encrypted files, and a decoding key.

FWIW one of my hats is that of a sound engineer/computer based audio editor, I've never heard of this format. Can't even find any references to it on a site that looks legit, like the manufacturers or anything. Even the marvellous filext.com has no reference to it. I'd definitely start by going back to the solicitors. It looks more like spyware to me than anything tbh

EDIT: found what claims to be the manufacturer's page, but it's down (hoteyesoft.com)
(Son of Sam-i-am We're all as mad as hatters here, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:50, Reply)

Aye
Yeah that's what I've deduced from my research, but I was hoping that although the solicitors have used hot-eye to create the disc, they wouldn't have encrypted it. They're total tossers, they're the ones who created the discs yet they didn't bother telling me I would need an encryption key or even a separate program. They're obviously bitter that the client left them and came to us. Grrr.
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:13, Reply)

ahhh
so the website is down is it? I've been trying different routes to it for a while, I assumed it was my works PC throwing a strop because I'm not admin. I'll try it again tomorrow. Thanks for all your responses, I knew I could rely on b3ta much more than our own outsourced IT people!!
( Kitty v1.0 desperately naive, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:19, Reply)

I Think
You're screwed.

www.whois.net/dnr/index.php?d=hoteyesoft&tld=com

The domain isn't down - it's been allowed to lapse meaning the company is out of business.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 0:20, Reply)

OK...
Done lot's of digging for the Hot-Eye Player and Codec and finally got them. Managed to download and install the player and codec. That's the good news.

Now the bad.

The format for Hot-Eye is .hex and not .hvc


Hot-Eye won't open an hvc extension and, even if it could, it would demand an encryption code.

Another thing - Hot-Eye only creates video files from AVI files so I don't see how these files are audio.

So these files weren't created with Hot-Eye.

Back to digging for an hvc audio format...

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 1:36, Reply)

This
Is becoming a bit of an epic bit of sleuthing.

Where I'm at.

I reasoned that, as these are voice files, the might have been recorded with some kind of Dictaphone and that the hvc format was some sort of propriatry Dictaphone format. So, tried a few google searaches and eventuall got a hit with :

digital voice recorder *.hvc

Problem was it was a protected pdf file and it was in Italian. So I download the pdf file. Cracked the protection and then had it translated by Yahoo. And found that it referred to a Depna Digital Voice Recorder and that one of it's file formats was .hvc. YAY!!

But now I needed to track down the software that can convert hvc files into MP3. The software I need is call Harbinger Converter 1.4

Drawn a blank trying to get that exact software but it turns out that there's something called HBDecoder that works on the same model (I'm presuming that the HB means Harbinger). So off I set to find that.

I found a few other people looking for the same thing and I found a guys e-mail address who said that he had the software and if someone gave him an ftp address then he'd upload it.

Well I don't have an FTP address he can use but I do have a website. I can't give him and ftp account as that would give him access to the whole of my site so I wrote a quick upload script. This lets him go to my site and upload a file to my server via php.

So I've done that and have just e-mailed him.

So, with a bit of luck and a following wind I *might* have the software in a few hours.

Fingers crossed.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 3:28, Reply)

Well done Legless!
If you don't manage to crack it I may be able to get it to open in some other software - I have a plethora of audio editing software and I'm betting the Dictaphone format will be a rip off of a common audio format with maybe some different headers, I reckon I could probably open it with a bit of work.
(Son of Sam-i-am We're all as mad as hatters here, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 9:24, Reply)

HA!
Got the bastard!!!

Got the fucking software! It converts HVC files to WAV.....

Managed to find a Chinese Denpa site and just downloaded the entire fucking site and got the right file....



YAY!!

Sorry. I'm feeling very smug now.

Off to Gaz Kitty.

Miasma? - you want a copy of this converter? It seems to handle quite a few obscure sound formats.


Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 9:59, Reply)