VLC for mac unable to play Q264 (H264) files

[jodaki]

Hi folks, I asked about this in January but the thread sort of died out:

Why does VLC for windows play Q264 files but VLC for Mac will not?

Q264 files are just H264 files (or so I read elsewhere on this forum). QNAP, the company who make my surveillance software save the files in this format, I assume, to force people to use their proprietary video viewer 'QVR Client'. This is a policy designed and implemented by blockheads or children because their software A) doesn't work, B) is the most unusable piece of c**p I have ever come across, and C) is totally opposed to the tide towards open formats. Anyway, long story short the files are apparently just H264 videos with headers changed to identify them as Q264.

Anyway, VLC for windows has been playing these files for several years now. However, our mac version STILL does not. Please can someone explain why this is so hard to do for the mac version, or, more importantly whether there is any chance that there are any plans to include this 'format' in the mac version any time soon? We only have macs except for 1 crappy old PC, which has a screen too small to see the surveillance videos properly. It seems there are a significant number of people with this problem.

Any info greatly appreciated.
thanks, John

[fkuehne]

Please share such a file with us, for instance using https://streams.videolan.org/upload/ (give the file name here after the upload!) so we can take a look. Typically, VLC for Mac should play exactly the same media as VLC for Windows.

[jodaki]

thanks for your reply Felix. The filename is : 2019-05-14 15-25-00~15-26-43.avi
Many thanks, John

[fkuehne]

Thanks a lot for sharing. You track progress on your issue here: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/22308

[jodaki]

thanks

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Actually: https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/22208

[jodaki]

Sorry John Baptiste - you may be correct but it is possible that that is not the correct bug track.

According to bug #22208 the problem only exists when hardware decoding is turned on - and is fixed when hardware decoding is turned off.

This is NOT the case with me. My VLC is unable to play Q264 files no matter what the hardware decoding setting. In other words, turning hardware decoding off doesn't fix the problem.

Is it still the same bug?

thanks, John

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

No, that is correct: there are 2 issues, one is simple to fix (done already for 4.0) and the other one is the duplicate one.

[Meng]

I just want to add that I have the same issue with VLC being unable to play q264-encoded videos. In my case, VLC generated a stream of errors which piled up so rapidly that I had to force quit the application to stop it.

I look forward to seeing a resolution to this issue in the near future.

[mdcoplus]

Same here.
Am so unable to play h264 video files from my dvr IP cameras using vlc 3.0.8 MacOS despite setting codec H264 video demuxer. Maybe therell be someone who knows the answer?

[jodaki]

This thread has gone dead. I dont blame them, after all this is the fault of the camera manufacturer not VLC. However, it's disappointing that VLC for windows can view these files - I dont quite get why its so hard to apply this fix to the MAC .