How to Convert iPhone HEVC Videos for Telegram Video Avatars Using FFmpeg

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Telegram video avatars silently reject uploads that do not meet strict technical requirements, including H.264 codec, yuv420p colorspace, 800x800 resolution, no audio, and a file size under 2 MB. iPhones have recorded video in HEVC (H.265) by default since iOS 11, making them incompatible with Telegram's video avatar endpoint without conversion. A developer discovered these undocumented constraints while building a Telegram bot, after users repeatedly reported that their iPhone videos were not being set as profile avatars. The fix involves using FFmpeg to transcode the video, applying crop detection to remove letterboxing, and setting the faststart flag so Telegram's server can read the file metadata sequentially. A sample Python bot implementation using aiogram and asyncio demonstrates how the conversion pipeline can be automated for end users.

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