Why iPhone HEVC Videos Silently Fail as Telegram Avatars

Short summary

iPhone videos silently fail as Telegram avatars because Telegram accepts only H.264 MP4s (not HEVC), under 2 MB, 800×800px, max 10 seconds, with zero error messaging. The author reverse-engineered requirements via TDLib source analysis and systematic testing, then shipped @LiveAvaBot—a free Python bot that auto-converts videos using ffmpeg's two-pass encode pipeline to meet bitrate constraints.

• •Telegram silently rejects non-H.264 video avatars, including iPhones' native HEVC+HDR format, enforcing a 2 MB, 800×800px, 10-second limit
• •Author reverse-engineered the spec by analyzing Telegram's TDLib source code and brute-force parameter testing
• •Built and shipped @LiveAvaBot, a free bot that auto-converts any video to Telegram-compliant format; 193+ active users

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