Encoding video for the iPhone

Update: Or just download QuickTime 7.2 from Software Update and use QuickTime Player to export for Apple iPhone or Apple iPhone (Cellular) 🙂

None of my H.264 movies I make will play on my iPhone, because I make “QuickTime” movies with H.264. The trick is to make MPEG-4 movies and use the proper settings. Here is what I found works for converting my videos.

From Apple’s iPhone Page I extracted these steps:

• File Menu -> Export movie
• Choose Movie to MPEG-4
• Click Options
• File Format: MP4
• Video Format: H.264
• Frame Rate: Current
• Key Frame: Automatic
• Click Video Options…
  • Check Baseline (I left main checked)
  • Check Faster Encode

This made a .mp4 file. The final trick was changing my HTML to use the proper TYPE:

<object width="320" height="240" classid="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B"
        codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
    <param name="src" value="http://www.geeksrus.com/movies/invisible_shield_iphone.mp4">
    <param name="controller" value="true">
    <param name="autoplay" value="false">
    <embed src="http://www.geeksrus.com/movies/invisible_shield_iphone.mp4"
        width="320" height="240"
        controller="true" autoplay="false"
        scale="tofit" cache="true"
        TYPE="video/mp4"
        pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"
    >
</object>

If you are on an iPhone, Check out this example. Its rather very cool, as it lets you know there is a video and then tapping it gives you a video UI!