How to extract the bitstream from H.264 video?

Question

I have a H.264 video and I want to extract the bitstream from it. In other words, I need to know the stream after encoding a video via H.264 standard. I am going to use the extracted stream in Matlab. How can I do this (extract the bitstream)? Is it possible to use ffmpeg?if so what is the command.

Answer 1

You can do this using

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -c copy -f h264 stream.264

Depending on what MATLAB expects, you may need to add a bitstream filter

ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -c copy -f h264 -vbsf h264_mp4toannexb stream.264