QSeee says it's .avi But it's NOT REALLY..... WTF ?

I'm trying to backup a video of a thief at my house from a QSEE DVR to download to Facebook or Youtube.

QSEE says it's converted it to .AVI

...and I can see it on MY computer after I've downloaded the codecs and it's properties says it's an .AVI

I've given it to the cops with the codecs and they see it fine on their PC.

But whenever I try to download it to Facebook, Youtube or convert it at zamzar.com it tells me it is an unrecognizable file, not an .avi

So it's obviously not REALLY an AVI.

Any ideas ? Or I'm willing to send the vid (its short, like 10 seconds) to someone who can convert it to TRUE .avi.

Did Q-See not give you any kind of video player program? Normally you're able to use those to convert the file format, especially if it's actually a Dahua manufactured DVR.

yes, and I have converted it through the DVR and it has an .avi extension.

But it would not play on my pc until I D/L the h.264 codec.

I just got off the phone with a qsee engineer and he says yes, it's an .avi file but a proprietary one that youtube/facebook may or may not recognize.

So I ask him, "is your final answer that it is impossible to download a QSEE .avi video to facebook or Youtube?". and he tells me, I'm not sure, I don't know that we've ever tried.

UGHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh seriously ?

You need to back it up in the DAV format and use the DAV player to convert it to the AVI format. That will get you an actual AVI file. As long as it's Dahua, it works; I've done it a hundred times and it's able to be uploaded to something like YouTube.