The headline needs to capture the key facts: iPhone videos fail as Telegram avatars, HEVC vs H.264 issue, FFmpeg fix.

Short summary

iPhone videos fail silently as Telegram avatars because Telegram's pipeline only accepts H.264 while iPhones record HEVC by default. The post documents Telegram's undocumented avatar requirements (H.264, yuv420p, 800x800, under 10 seconds, no audio, under 2 MB, faststart) and provides a two-pass FFmpeg pipeline plus an aiogram 3 Telegram bot that automates the conversion.

• •Telegram silently drops HEVC iPhone videos as avatars — only H.264 with yuv420p is accepted
• •Full avatar spec: 800x800 square, under 10s, no audio track, under 2MB, moov atom at front
• •Includes a working aiogram 3 Telegram bot that auto-converts uploaded videos via FFmpeg

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