ffmpeg video does not play on whatsapp

Question

I've been trying to get a video to play on whatsapp but I can't get it to work. I've read almost all the stackexchange posts on this topic but nothing seems to work.

I use the following command to convert images into a video:

ffmpeg -r 30 -f image2 -i Export-%03d.JPG -vf scale=1800:1200 -vcodec libx265 -crf 20 -pix_fmt yuv420p Timelapse.mp4

I can't send this on whatsapp because it sends it as a seperate file instead of a video

I've used the following command to send it via whatsapp:

ffmpeg -i Timelapse.mp4 -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -crf 28 TimelapseFixed.mp4 (from this post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39887869/ffmpeg-whatsapp-video-format-not-supported)

This command executes and I can send the video via whatsapp, but it only opens and it doesn't play.

I've tried lowering the file size using a higher crf, but this also didn't work

What am I doing wrong, and how can i fix it?

Answer 1

I had the same problem of whatsapp treating my video as a document file and I also tried the solutions in the posts, to no avail. What worked in the end for me was to reduce the number of audio channels, the audiostream of my video had 5.1 sound, With the option -ac 2 you can reduce them to two channels. For me this solved the problem.