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I've heard that Windows Media Player has problems trying to play H.264 video over RTSP. I've just made a fresh install of Windows 7, which claims to support H.264 natively (and it actually did ok playing the simpsons sample from http://www.h264info.com/clips.html). But when I try to view this same file streamed through RTSP, it complains and doesn't play the video saying:

"Windows Media Player cannot play the file. One or more codecs required to play the file could not be found."

How can it be complaining about a codec which was perfectly capable of decoding this same file?

I'm using Unreal Media Server to stream this file and connecting from the same computer.

What one could do to make WMP on Win 7 play H264 over RTSP?

Roman R.
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HFSDev
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  • Maybe it is just me, but I can't see a programming question here. – crashmstr Jun 22 '12 at 19:40
  • @crashmstr: it is or might be a programming question. WMP is embeddable into application, but the question is you cannot make it work [within your app] showing certain video feeds... – Roman R. Jun 22 '12 at 19:48
  • Yes, the problem is how to handle H264 over RTSP with MF objects... – HFSDev Jun 22 '12 at 20:04

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While there is support for RTSP in Media Foundation, I don't think H.264 RTP Payload is supported.

See http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/da/mediafoundationdevelopment/thread/4ac87f5f-b8c5-471a-a424-55c0fff04eac

Another issue is that the RTSP source only supports a small number of RTP payload formats -- ASF, MP3, and LPCM. If your camera streams MPEG4, MJPEG, or some other format, the RTSP source will not handle it.

Roman R.
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    This topic is some kind old(2010), haven't something new come into place?! Darn you WMP! – HFSDev Jun 22 '12 at 20:05
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    It is Media Foundation API, which is not providing good coverage for RTSP. Perhaps you would be better off with DirectShow and third party source filter to receive RTSP stream. – Roman R. Jun 22 '12 at 20:25
  • Do you know if there's some kind of logging that we could confirm root cause? I believe it's something with the payload format. – HFSDev Jun 28 '12 at 19:00
  • You can record RTSP conversion using network sniffer such as Wireshark. As for support for H.264 on Media Foundation, I don't have a confirming link into documentation handy, but I believe that scope of support is somewhere on docs. – Roman R. Jun 28 '12 at 19:38
  • Yes, I've tried capturing RTSP traffic but this is difficult in localhost under windows... I'll try to get this traffic over some repote pc. Thx again. – HFSDev Jun 29 '12 at 12:52