VLC

Dealing with FFMPEG Error while opening codec for output stream…

This specific content was written 11 years ago. Please keep this in mind as it may be outdated and not adhering to best-practices.

Quick post about the ffmpeg error message: “Error while opening codec for output stream #0.0 – maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height” .

We received some video files from a partner in the Safecity project, which did not play in all media players.
We tried VLC, windows media player, and a variety of other players but nothing worked.

Checking the file with a hex editor, I saw there was data within the video, and thought to try converting with FFMPEG using commands such as:

ffmpeg -i “damaged_file.avi” converted_file.mp4

However, ffmpeg  failed with the following error message:

Error while opening codec for output stream #0.0 – maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

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Logging in VLC 2.0.3 not working in Windows 7 and Fix

This specific content was written 11 years ago. Please keep this in mind as it may be outdated and not adhering to best-practices.

Working on a project, I noticed that I could not access the VLC 2.0.3 log (or even see it).

I had followed the instructions related to the Tools>Messages dialog, and changed the Verbosity level to enable the logging but it was not working.

After some thought I realized that as these configurations are stored as files within the VLC program files folder.

VLC must be run as administrator for the logging to actually work due to the windows 7 security restrictions.