Question :
I have a short video file (a movie clip) that I want to share with my friends on WhatsApp. When I drag&drop it into the WhatsApp.app in macOS, the file appears to start uploading… but when done, there is no preview shown and no Play-button, just a file icon… as if it were an unknown or incompatible type of file…
What can I do to fix this ?
Answer :
Before uploading your video file to WhatsApp, you must make sure your video file meets WhatsApp’s file requirements :
- video format preferably MP4 in H.264 or MPEG-4 codec ( MKV, AVI or 3GP will also do )
- audio format preferably AAC ( or AC3 codec )
- file size smaller than about 16MB ( in reality even 18MB might be okay )
- usually, this means your movie clip will be about 90 seconds, but by tweaking the display size and the frame rate ( fps ) you can even squeeze 3 minutes or more into about 16MB
Do this to check your video’s specifications :
- right-click ( CTRL-click ) on the movie clip’s icon
- select “Get Info” from the popup-menu
- in the window that opens, check these :
- the file name either has the “.mov” or “.mp4” file extension
- at “Size:” less that 18MB should be listed
- at “Codecs:” either “H.264” or “H.264, AAC” is listed
If these are all okay, you should be able to just drag&drop the movie clip into the macOS WhatsApp.app.
If not, you will have to convert the movie clip. To do this conversion, do this :
- first, download the FREE OmniConverter.app ( by 7littlemen ) from the Mac AppStore :
- then, open the OmniConverter.app and click on “Convert Video” from the list on the left
- then, drag&drop your movie clip file onto the OmniConverter window
- now, at the right of the arrow (in the middle), check if “MP4” is listed and the file size is less than 18MB
- if you do not see “MP4” listed at the right of the middle arrow, click the Format-button
- in the window that opens, select the “Device”-tab
- then, select “iPhone” from the list on the left
- then, select the “iPhone HD” option
- now, click the Confirm-button
- if you see a file size larger than 18MB listed at the right of the middle arrow, click the Edit-button
- in the window that opens, at “Video”>”Encoder:” select “H.264”
- and at “Audio”>”Encoder:” select “AAC”
- leave the rest as is and click the Confirm-button
- if you do not see “MP4” listed at the right of the middle arrow, click the Format-button
- back in the Convert Video window, click on the Start-button ( circled arrow icon, at the right )
- now, wait for the conversion to complete
- if the file size already was less than 18MB, you’re usually okay and you will not need to do extra compression
- if the file size was over 18MB, do this :
- open the OmniConverter.app and click on “Compress Video” from the list on the left
- drag&drop the .mp4-video you’ve just converted onto the OmniConverter window
- check if the file size listed at the right of the arrow (in the middle) is less than 16MB
- if so, click the Start-button on the right
- if not, click the Edit-button (below the arrow)
- in the window that opens, set the “Quality:”-slider in-between “Mid” and “High”, set “Resolution:” to “720P” and set “Frame Rate:” to “24 FPS”
- if at “Size:” it now says anything less than 16MB, click the Confirm-button
- if at “Size:” it says anything over 30MB, set “Resolution:” to “480P”
- if at “Size:” it says anything between 20MB and 30MB, set the “Quality:”-slider to “Mid”
- now, if at “Size:” it still says anything over 18MB, start tweaking the available settings until at “Size:” it says about 15MB ( see how much the file size decreases when you tweak each setting to find the optimal combination of settings )
- when done, click the Confirm-button
- now, in the “Compress Video” window, click the Start-button
- …and wait for the compression to finish
After the file conversion, drag&drop the converted movie clip into the WhatsApp.app to share it with your friends…
That’s it !
enjoy 😉
MacManus.nl 