forcing VLC to play h264 video file

Question

I have an h264 video file without video container information, but I am using only a 8.3 FAT File system. When opening a *.h264 file with VLC, VLC plays it correctly since it understands that this is an h264 encoded video. But how can this be done if I am only able to have 8.3 format for filenames? How can I tell VLC that a file named X.264 for example is an h264 video file? Windows Media Player 10 and above is able to identify this automatically. Thanks, Avi Tal.

Answer 1

I usually use this command to play raw h.264 from my MAC.

/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC ~/Movies/demo.264 --demux h264

Note that you have to invoke it from terminal.

Hope it answer your question.

Answer 2

This also works if you find .mp4 files won't play (and you know they were encoded with H264). In those circumstances the prompt is "/Applications/VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC ~/Movies/demo.mp4 --demux h264"