H.264 UDP streaming

[veerkmr]

I am using VLC for streaming H.264 video over network by using UDP streaming.
When i stream an MPEG1 encoded file (UDP streaming), VLC player at the another end can decode the stream samples and display video. Same time, H.264 stream samples are not decoded by VLC by using the same technique.

But the same H.264 file is getting decoded by VLC player in standalone mode (not streaming, just file open, play). While streaming H.264 it gives the following error against the file format..

ffmpeg error: av_find_stream_info failed
ps error: cannot peek
main error: no suitable demux module for `udp/://@'

Can anybody point out when it plays in stand alone mode, why cant it play in stream mode?

Thanks in advance.
Veer Kumar

[ph0t0n]

If you included the command line arguments used to perform the streaming in your post, it would make it easier to help you. Also include more verbose error messages (complete script output). However, it seems that 1) VLC expects input to be MPEG1 still, and 2) specified demux module is incorrect. If streaming h.264 includes transcoding to another format, you're out of luck. That just won't work.

[veerkmr]

Thanks for your reply. We are not using command line options explicitly. May be i dont know how to set command line options in VLC. I am still unable to build VLC in Windows XP platform. I am just using the VLC player executable (the one downloaded from VLC website). So i dont have the detailed verbose error message (complete script). What i am getting from VLC player menu options View->Messages is as below.

ffmpeg error: av_find_stream_info failed
ps error: cannot peek
main error: no suitable demux module for `udp/://@'

Does VLC expects streaming input format to be always MPEG1 only? What needs to be done for an H.264 video stream?
I am not using any transcoding format for H.264 video. (transcoding check box is unchecked). Where as the encapsulation method is still MPEG-TS (all other options are disabled when i select output as UDP streaming).

Thanks,
Veer Kumar

[ph0t0n]

I use VLC exclusively on Mac OS X, so I am afraid I can't guide you as to how you navigate in the GUI menus of VLC on Windows. I put commands into shell scripts to play video, transcode or stream out to clients. You can run batch scripts on Windows in much the same way, which may be better, so that you don't have to run through a wizard every time to do the same thing. Also, many more things are possible on the command line that is not available in the GUI. You get to learn the possibilities of VLC quite well at the same time. VLC doesn't expect MPEG1 as input per se, no - but this might have been specified earlier in the program settings/options/preferences (that's what the error messages you get seems to indicate, anyway.), and must (unless edited) be overwritten by options or arguments specified on the command line at run time.

You only need to compile VLC for your platform if a precompiled binary for that platform is not compiled with support for modules you need, like OGG/Theora encoding or perhaps OGG/Vorbis decoding. Do a 'path\to\vlc -l' (without the quotes) on the command line to see what modules (muxers/demuxers, encoders and decoders) your version of VLC has been compiled with. Doing 'path\to\vlc --advanced --longhelp > vlchelp.txt' outputs a help file with 3500+ lines of available options and arguments to use to accomplish anything from playing a DVD to streaming OGG over HTTP. Give it a (long) read!

Also look up the streaming and playing howtos on http://www.videolan.org/ in the documentation section.