raw h.264 packet capture and playing in VLC

Question

Hi,

I am capturing packets off the network from a video conference HDX. The video is sent in RTP and is encoded in H264.

I am trying to capture these packets and generate a video file. I wrote raw H264 data from the packets to disk and i am trying to play it in VLC.

VLC just shows a green box.

Am i being too naive in my approach with data writing or should am I wrong in assuming that VLC should play this file?

Anyone have any experience in such things?

Answer 1

You should be able to do a raw dump of the packets into a file.

The file format is simply the packets appended one after the other with nothing else in between. The file name should be .dump and once you do that, VLC should replay the video correctly. I just had to do this and this is what worked for me.

Answer 2

Another option on linux would be to create a gstreamer pipeline that captures rtp, decodes using ffmpeg and displays on screen using ximageview.

Answer 3

what kind of header needs to be appended before each video packet??