How to Encode Video for Mobile Phones

If you are a video geek and need a little push in the right direction to make your video as compatible as possible for mobile devices, try the settings below. To simplify: this means a file that ends with .MP4 OR .M4V. Both files are H.264 files with slightly different wrappers.

MOST COMPATIBLE VIDEO FORMAT FOR MOBILE DEVICES

Video: H.264, Level 3.0, Baseline profile
Audio: AAC, 1-2 channels

Check out the essential details and links after the break …

• audio_bitrate: 128 (or less)
• audio_sample_rate: 44100 (or less)
• size: 480×320
• max_framerate: 30
• video_bitrate: 1500 (or less)

This will play on just about everything, though it doesn’t take advantage of the higher resolutions and codec complexity possible on the newest crop of devices.

Plays on:

• iOS: iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod Touch, iPod Classic, iPod 5.5G
• Blackberry: Bold 9000, Curve 8910, 8900, 8520, Pearl 9XXX, Storm, Storm 2, Torch, Tour, Bold 9650 + 9700
• Android: All (?)
• Other: PSP (3.30+), PS3, Xbox 360, web

Doesn’t play on:

• iPod 5G, PSP (pre-3.30), Blackberry Curve 9330, 9300, 8530, 83XX, Pearl 8XXX, 88XX

ZenCoder, a great, up-and-coming company, posted these specs in a recent blog post – and deserve credit for trying to make video encoding much easier. They also posted another great article here, but it is not for the faint of heart.

OTHER TOOLS TO SIMPLIFY YOUR WORKFLOW:

MiroConverter: this is THE FREE VIDEO CONVERSION TOOL! Drag-and-Drop easy: http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/.

VideoJS: Zencoder also gives away the HTML5-compatible VideoJS video player code here: http://videojs.com/. It is the leader in HTML5-compliant video players.

VideoJS WordPress Plugin: We use WordPress for all our websites and enjoy the community support for almost any need. VideoJS is no exception – they have provided this excellent plugin for WordPress: http://videojs.com/wordpress/.