How iPhone HEVC Videos Fail Silently as Telegram Avatars and How to Fix Them
iPhones have recorded video in HEVC (H.265) format by default since iOS 11, but Telegram's profile video avatar feature only accepts H.264-encoded clips, causing uploads to fail without any error message. The platform also rejects 10-bit HDR footage, non-square aspect ratios, files with audio tracks, and clips longer than 10 seconds or larger than roughly 2 MB. A developer diagnosed these undocumented requirements by cross-referencing Telegram's Bot API docs with repeated failed upload attempts. The fix involves a two-pass FFmpeg process that crops the video to an 800x800 square, converts pixel format to yuv420p, strips audio, trims to 10 seconds, and outputs an MP4 with the moov atom at the front. The developer subsequently built a Telegram bot using the aiogram library to automate this conversion for any uploaded video file.
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