Convert AVI into H.264 that works inside an HTML5 Video tag

Question

I would like to convert an existing black and white AVI into an H.264 video that works inside an HTML5 video tag.

I'm currently using this ffmpeg command:

ffmpeg -i file.avi -y -c:v libx264 file.h264

This command does not work for me. It does produce the H.264 file, but it does not play anywhere else other than VLC player.

Solution

.h264 is just a raw H.264 bytestream. That's just video content, which can be played back by sophisticated players, but usually you want to put everything into a container format, such as MPEG-4 Part 14 ("MP4").

So, run:

ffmpeg -i file.avi -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p file.mp4

For HTML5 progressive download you may want to move the moov atom of the MP4 container to the beginning of the file, which allows instant playback:

ffmpeg -i file.avi -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p -movflags faststart file.mp4

You may be interested in: What is a Codec (e.g. DivX?), and how does it differ from a File Format (e.g. MPG)?

Comments

[SF Developer]

The MP4 output does not run on either an HTML5 Video tag or Windows Media Player. When I ran your command, I get a yellow message that says "Deprecated pixel format used, make sure you did set range correctly. No pixel format specified, yuvj444p for h.264 encoding chosen. Use -pix_fmt yuv420p ..which I used and now I can see the video on an HTML5 video tag.

[slhck]

Yeah, that's why they have the message there. In the future, please post the full command line output of your ffmpeg commands too, not just the command itself. Then I would've probably told you that you needed to change the pixel format due to the non-standard input you have.

[SF Developer]

My current scenario is this: the video is created on a local client machine and converted to h264 for compression, quality and SIZE (since I have to upload it via an API to the server). The 70Mg avi becomes 100K h264 video compared to a 1MG mp4 (so for upload reasons it's good to first convert it as h264 and then on the server to final mp4). I wonder if the command -i file.avi -y -c:v libx264 file.h264 I ran on the client should be different ...knowing that I will need to reconvert it on the server to mp4.

[SF Developer]

I'll try that ...thanks for the help. and yes i'll upload the entire output next time. Much appreciated !!

[Jet Blue]

For anyone it might help, if you are using the flag -crf 0, you need to change this to a value of 1 or higher. For whatever reason mp4's created with -crf 0 also fail on "dumb players"

[slhck]

@JetBlhe That is because CRF 0 will force YUV444 color format. Many players only support YUV422.

[Admin]

thank you, it really worth to convert for an accepted format on modern smartphones