The file you are trying to play only contains the samples for the video pels. There is no informational metadata such as colour space, picture width, picture height, frame rate, interlace properties, which is first display field if interlaced etc.
I suspect that the producer is looking to the file to get the metadata to do the play operation, does not find any and hence returns the error you found.
There is sometimes a metadata file stored with the .yuv video samples file that other programs use to extract the frames at the correct size and speed.