open/convert a .264 file?

**chellrose** · May 16th, 2011

Someone has asked me to convert a video file for them. The file came from their DVR, and it is named file.264. I've tried various suggestions from a Google search, but with no success. Does anyone know how to open such a file? Thanks.

**SeijiSensei** · May 16th, 2011

I'd try mplayer. Given the name it's probably a file encoded with the H.264 codec which is pretty much the standard for HD.

Install mplayer from the repositories, then type "mplayer /path/to/file.264" at a command prompt and see what happens. mplayer will give you a lot of information on what it finds in that file and whether it can play it.

**andrew.46** · May 16th, 2011

As SeijiSensei has suggested MPlayer would be your best bet but you may find that MPlayer will barf on some raw h.264 streams. If so simply mux it into a container such as mp4 with MP4Box or matroska with mkvmerge and then it should play ok.

**chellrose** · May 16th, 2011

Thanks for the responses. I couldn't get MP4Box working in either Windows or Wine (Windows complained about a missing dll file; Wine insisted I install Mono, which I couldn't find in the repositories).

mplayer wouldn't play the file. Here is the output:

Code:

myun@mycomp:~$ mplayer Desktop/file.264
MPlayer SVN-r1.0~rc3+svn20090426-4.4.3 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing Desktop/file.264.
H264-ES file format detected.
FPS not specified in the header or invalid, use the -fps option.
No stream found.


Exiting... (End of file)

myun@mycomp:~$ mplayer -fps=25 Desktop/file.264
Unknown option on the command line: -fps=25
Error parsing option on the command line: -fps=25
MPlayer SVN-r1.0~rc3+svn20090426-4.4.3 (C) 2000-2009 MPlayer Team

From the man page, fps=25 appeared to be the correct way to set that option...

So, I tried mkvmerge. It gave me a strange error message:

Error: '/home/myun/Desktop/file.264' track 0: mkvmerge encountered broken or unparsable data in this AVC/h.264 video track. Either your file is damaged (which mkvmerge cannot cope with yet) or this is a bug in mkvmerge itself. The error message was:

There really was nothing in that area where there is supposed to be an error message. Any other suggestions?

Thanks.

**SeijiSensei** · May 17th, 2011

-fps doesn't take an equals sign. Most of the major mplayer parameters don't either.

Usually frame rates are ~24 fps for progressive encodes and ~30 for NTSC video. The actual values are fractionally smaller and should be entered as follows:

for 24 fps use "-fps 24000/1001"
for 30 fps use "-fps 30000/1001"

mplayer can interpret these fractions and will represent them internally as floating point numbers.

**anjilslaire** · May 17th, 2011

Have you tried Handbrake?

**chellrose** · May 17th, 2011

Thanks. mplayer at least opens the file with those options, though the playback falters in several places. I have no idea what the actual frame rate is; I tried both of your examples, and mplayer at least opened the video...

I've not tried Handbrake. I'll look into it.

Update: I installed both the GUI and CLI versions of handbrake from the repositories listed on their website. I can't get the cli version to run -- there doesn't appear to be an executable, just a bunch of documentation, none of which pertains to the actual operation of the program. In the GUI, I selected my file as the source. The program seems to scan it quickly and then reverts to Source:None. I can't find anything resembling an error log. Is there a step I'm missing?

**pricetech** · May 17th, 2011

Not that I can help you read it, but I suspect the issue is a proprietary codec. We have a DVR here that outputs some seriously oddball videos that can only be played with the vendor's player software.

Is that an option for you ??