I bought a h264 security camera system last year and set it up to ftp video to my computer. I was able to get the video to play (even though it played a little fast) on Ubuntu 11.04 using mplayer.
A few months ago, I did a fresh install of 12.04 and I cannot seem to get the video to play with mplayer, smplayer or VLC. I have the restricted formats video packages installed and when playing with any of the players, all I get is a gray video.
When calling mplayer from the command line to play the video with no options, I get a lot of these errors:
[h264 @ 0x7f278c61f280]concealing 1320 DC, 1320 AC, 1320 MV errors
No pts value from demuxer to use for frame!
pts after filters MISSING
I'm not a video expert and have been coming up with a lot of dead ends when Googling for this. Could someone offer some advice about how to play these videos?
Here is the output of mediainfo for a sample file.
mediainfo -f sec-cam01-m-20120921-212454.h264
General
Count : 278
Count of stream of this kind : 1
Kind of stream : General
Kind of stream : General
Stream identifier : 0
Count of video streams : 1
Video_Format_List : AVC
Video_Format_WithHint_List : AVC
Codecs Video : AVC
Complete name : sec-cam01-m-20120921-212454.h264
File name : sec-cam01-m-20120921-212454
File extension : h264
Format : AVC
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format/Url : http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html
Format/Extensions usually used : avc h264
Commercial name : AVC
Internet media type : video/H264
Codec : AVC
Codec : AVC
Codec/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Codec/Url : http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html
Codec/Extensions usually used : avc h264
File size : 1097315
File size : 1.05 MiB
File size : 1 MiB
File size : 1.0 MiB
File size : 1.05 MiB
File size : 1.046 MiB
File last modification date : UTC 2012-09-22 01:27:12
File last modification date (local) : 2012-09-21 21:27:12
Video
Count : 205
Count of stream of this kind : 1
Kind of stream : Video
Kind of stream : Video
Stream identifier : 0
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format/Url : http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html
Commercial name : AVC
Format profile : [email protected]
Format settings : 1 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, CABAC : No
Format settings, ReFrames : 1
Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame
Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=3
Internet media type : video/H264
Codec : AVC
Codec : AVC
Codec/Family : AVC
Codec/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Codec/Url : http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html
Codec profile : [email protected]
Codec settings : 1 Ref Frames
Codec settings, CABAC : No
Codec_Settings_RefFrames : 1
Width : 704
Width : 704 pixels
Height : 480
Height : 480 pixels
Pixel aspect ratio : 1.000
Display aspect ratio : 1.467
Display aspect ratio : 3:2
Standard : NTSC
Resolution : 8
Resolution : 8 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Scan type : Progressive
Interlacement : PPF
Interlacement : Progressive
Edit: Here is a sample video using the same encoding: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l5acwzy8rtqn9xe/sec-cam08-m-20121118-105815.h264 (not the same video as mediainfo output)
mmgfrom the mkvtoolnix package with different settings might help getting a playable video file.