# Reminder: iPhone wants H.264 encoded videos

- Published: 2021-10-14
- URL: https://notes.webutvikling.org/video-wont-render-on-iphone
- Tags: debugging, tools

I came over a bug where the video wouldn't play on iPhone, but worked on a Mac.

```html
<video>
	<source src="flower.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
</video>
```

The HTML tag was valid, the video HTTP response wasn't an issue. Instead it was unsupported video encoding (which took me hours to figure out).

And here's how I made the video compatible with iPhones, using [ffmpeg](https://www.ffmpeg.org/):

```bash
# Replace "input.mp4"
ffmpeg \
  -i input.mp4 \
  -vcodec libx264 \
  -acodec aac output.mp4
```

_I also realized getting stuck on this problem 5 years ago 😩_

### Related

- [apple.com: "Delivering Video Content for Safari"](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/webkit/delivering_video_content_for_safari)