Is there any easy way to extract h.264 raw stream in annexb format?

Question

When I extract video stream with ffmpeg using command-line:

ffmpeg -i {some file} -vcodec copy -an -f {rawvideo|h264|whatever} out.h264

with some media files produced by Adobe Media Encoder, only .m4v (encoded as h.264 blu-ray) files can produce some usable results.

Some other format(like .f4v) can produce h.264 stream, but without PPS/SPS, and each slice starts with size instead of 00 00 00 01 sequence.

I wish I can extract annexb format raw streams from as many as possible files that contains valid h.264 stream. I know I can add PPS/SPS and change size into 00 00 00 01 myself. But is there any existing software can do this?

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Or can it be guaranteed that ffmpeg can always extract streams in annexb format from .m4v file, no matter with what software the file is encoded?

Answer 1

What you are probably looking for is the h264_mp4toannexb bitstream filter, invoked with the -bsf command line option:

ffmpeg -i {some file} -vcodec copy -bsf h264_mp4toannexb -an -f {rawvideo|h264|whatever} out.h264

Be advised that if your version of FFmpeg is a bit old, you may need to use -vbsf instead of -bsf (the option was renamed recently).