H264 frame viewer

Question

Do you know any application that will display me all the headers/parameters of a single H264 frame? I don't need to decode it, I just want to see how it is built up.

Answer 1

Three ways come to my mind (if you are looking for something free, otherwise google "h264 analysis" for paid options):

1. Download the h.264 parser from (from this thread @ doom9 forums)

2. Download the h.264 reference software

3. libh264bitstream provides h.264 bitstream reading/writing

This should get you started. By the way, the h.264 bitstream is described in Annex. B. in the ITU specs.

Answer 2

I've created a Web version - https://mradionov.github.io/h264-bitstream-viewer/

Based on h264bitstream and inspired by H264Naked. Done by compiling h264bitstream into WebAssembly and building a simple UI on top of it. Output information for NAL units is taken from H264Naked at the moment. Also supports files of any size, just will take some time initially to load the file, but navigation throughout the stream should be seamless.

Answer 3

I had the same question. I tried h264 analysis, but it only supports windows. So I made a similar tool with Qt to support different platforms.Download H264Naked. This tool is essentially a wrapper around libh264bitstream