Fixing iPhone HEVC Videos That Telegram Silently Rejects

Short summary

iPhones record in HEVC by default, but Telegram's video avatar pipeline silently rejects HEVC files without error—leaving users staring at a stuck upload spinner. The author documented the exact specs (H.264, 800×800px, yuv420p pixel format, no audio track, max 10 seconds, ~2MB) and built a two-pass ffmpeg workflow that detects and crops black bars, then encodes to spec. Result: a Python Telegram bot (@LiveAvaBot) that handles the conversion automatically. 201 users, ~10 conversions daily.

• •Telegram video avatars require H.264, 800×800px, yuv420p, no audio, max 10 seconds (~2MB)—but iPhones default to HEVC and silently fail
• •Two-pass ffmpeg solution: cropdetect for black bars, then scale/convert/encode with H.264 baseline and faststart moov atom
• •Live product: @LiveAvaBot Telegram bot automates conversion, 201 users, ~10 daily conversions

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