Converting H.264 to MJPEG using FFmpeg and VLC

Are you struggling to convert H.264 video streams into MJPEG format for use with VLC? Look no further! In this guide, we'll explore how to use FFmpeg and VLC to achieve this conversion.

The first step is to encode your raw RGB24 video using FFmpeg's libx264 encoder. You can do this by piping the input file or stream into FFmpeg. Here's an example command:

```

ffmpeg -i input.raw -c:v libx264 output.h264

```

This will produce a h.264 encoded video file.

Next, you'll need to pipe the output of the FFmpeg command into VLC as a standard input (stdin) stream. You can do this using the following command:

```

cvlc stream:///dev/stdin -sout '#transcode{vcodec=mjpeg}'

```

This command tells VLC to take the input from stdin, transcode it to MJPEG format, and stream it over HTTP.

Unfortunately, VLC cannot produce MJPEG streams directly from raw input. This is why you need to use FFmpeg's libx264 encoder to convert your H.264 video into a format that VLC can work with.

In this example, we're using the OMX hardware encoder on the Raspberry Pi camera to encode the frames in real-time. However, if you're processing frames from the camera and modifying them, you may need to use FFmpeg's software encoder instead.

Overall, converting H.264 video streams into MJPEG format using FFmpeg and VLC is a straightforward process that requires only a few simple commands. By following these steps, you should be able to achieve your goal of streaming MJPEG video over HTTP using VLC.

Ffmpeg h264 to mjpeg