Any Format Video Player (VS Code extension)

Plays any video format inside VS Code — including HEVC / H.265 camera feeds (the reason the built-in viewer shows a black screen) — by transcoding to H.264 on the fly with ffmpeg.

Why the built-in viewer fails

VS Code's built-in media preview renders video through Electron/Chromium, which has no H.265/HEVC decoder. This extension probes each file with ffprobe and:

• H.264 / VP8 / VP9 / AV1 in mp4/mov/webm → streams the original file natively.
• Everything else (HEVC, mkv, avi, ts, mxf, ...) → spawns ffmpeg to transcode to H.264 + AAC in a fragmented MP4 and streams it straight into the player.

Requirements

• ffmpeg and ffprobe in PATH (already present on this server).
• For speed, an NVIDIA GPU with h264_nvenc is auto-detected and preferred; otherwise it falls back to libx264 (CPU).

How to run it

Option A — Development host (quickest)

1. Open this folder (Video_player_extention) as a VS Code window:

   code /home/ubuntu/neo_dashboard/pika-poc-backend/pizza_capiche_all/Video_player_extention
   

2. Press F5 (the included .vscode/launch.json starts the Extension Development Host).
3. In the new window, either:
   • right-click a video in the Explorer → Any-Format Video Player, or
   • open a video and use Open With... → Any-Format Video Player, or
   • run the command Any-Format Video Player: Open Video....

Option B — Package and install (.vsix)

cd /home/ubuntu/neo_dashboard/pika-poc-backend/pizza_capiche_all/Video_player_extention
npm install -g @vscode/vsce
vsce package
code --install-extension any-format-video-player-1.0.0.vsix

Then reload VS Code.

Files

• extension.js — command + custom editor provider + webview UI.
• server.js — local HTTP server (127.0.0.1, random port) that probes files, serves native streams with HTTP Range support, and pipes ffmpeg transcodes.
• package.json — manifest (commands, custom editor, context menus).

Notes / troubleshooting

• Slow first frame: the first transcode of a 1080p HEVC file starts in a few seconds with NVENC; longer on CPU.
• No ffmpeg: you will see a warning; install it (sudo apt install ffmpeg) for HEVC support.
• The local server binds to 127.0.0.1 only and is created lazily on first use.