[MPlayer-users] How do you play raw h.264 files in mplayer?

[Stephen Mollett]

Hi,

On Friday, 12 August 2011, 12:32, David <wizzardx at gmail.com> wrote:

> Why does mplayer take so long to start playing a h.264 stream that's
> passed to it on stdin or over a named pipe?
> ...

> I have a script, "test.py", which prints out raw h.264 data (from a
> DVR) to stdout.
> 
> If I pipe that into mplayer like this:
> 
> ./test.py | mplayer - -fps 25
> 
> Then it spends about 10 seconds doing this:
> 
> -----------
> Playing -.
> Reading from stdin...
> Cannot seek backward in linear streams!
> Seek failed 
> ...

My guess is that it's waiting for a keyframe or some other kind of header that is inserted in the stream periodically. If it's a live stream, it has to wait in real time, whereas if it's playing a file saved from the stream, it can read it in as fast as it likes until it finds what it's after.

Stephen


-- 


I haven't lost my mind - it's backed up on tape somewhere!