How to convert any video file to 3GP and play it in your mobile phone PDF Print E-mail

Modern mobile phones have more and more features. They include cameras, games, mp3 players, radio receivers and of course, video players. However the files you already have in your computer are not playable in your mobile phone right away. To help you achieve that this guide exists! We will use the freeware tool SUPER, probably the best free video converter available. You can download it from our site here. (you need to be registered and logged in)
Keep in mind that as the phone's technology advances, they support more and more codecs and better quality video playback than before. So in this guide we have included two images that show the most appropriate settings, one for older phones and one for the newest models.

Step 1

Old Mobiles Settings


This is the main window of SUPER. Lets explain all the settings you need one by one.
First of all you need to select the format of the video (1). The great majority of the phones uses the 3gp format. Select "3gp (Nokia/NEC/Siemens)" here or the "3gp (Sony Ericsson)" if you have that brand. If your phone's brand is not here but you are positive you can playback videos, select the "3gp (Nokia/NEC/Siemens) " option. In the "Output Video Codec" field select H.263 and in the "Output Audio Codec" one of the AMR options (Narrow-Band is more compatible with the various phones).

Next comes the DirectShow (2) option which will let you use any video playable from Windows Media Player in SUPER. We suggest you enable it and only you have trouble set it off.

What follows are the video settings (3). Here you must know your phone's resolution and select the setting closer to its native one (you should be able to find this resolution in the manual or in the manufacturer's website). After you decide what resolution to use, set the aspect ratio and set the frame rate to 12.5 or 15. The bigger the better, but if you see what your phone has trouble playing back the files you made try lower values. Finally set the bitrate somewhere between 128 and 240. The bigger, the nicer in terms of quality, but you also get a larger file, so if you are short in memory you may want to use a low value.

Our next stop are the audio settings (4). Not much to do here, if you have a hands free set a higher bitrate than what we have selected in the image so that the audio quality is higher.

In area (5) you can put the videos you want to be converted. You can drag-and-drop them inside or right-click and select "Add Multimedia Files". We will explain some more settings of the right-click menu in Step 3.

If you have one of the latest models that include phones like Nokia N Series and Nokia 6270/6280 read Step 2 to find out how to use the best settings for them. If not, ignore the next step and proceed to Step 3.


Step 2

High quality

Let us remind you once again that this steps contains the different settings a user that owns one of the latest mobile phones should use in order to create higher quality videos.

First of all the container you should use is still the 3gp one. Some phones support .mp4 files but it is actually the same thing so you better keep the 3gp setting so that you are sure everything works as it should. Next in line comes the video codec (1) that you should set to MPEG-4. Afterwards set the audio codec (2) to AAC.

Now lets move down to the video settings (3). In the resolution setting you should select the one that is the native resolution for your mobile phone's screen. For example for a Nokia 6280 that has a 320x240 value we set the same value in SUPER. In the frame rate and aspect ratio use the same one as source video. (you can get these info about the source video if you double-click on it while it is in the list). Finally in the bitrate box set something between 192 and 432. As we already said before, the bigger bitrate the better in terms of quality but also the file gets larger.

Finally, in the audio settings (4), a bitrate between 48 and 96 is enough depending on your choice about the video quality.


Step 3

Menu


Before you click the Encode button lets review the settings in SUPER's menu. To add some file in the to-be converted list use "Add Multimedia Files" (1) and select the files you wish to use. You can also add playlist file to add quickly more that one files.

A setting you should set before you encode is "Specify The Output Folder Destination" (2), and select the directory in your hard disk that you want SUPER to put the files it will encode in.

The rest of the settings are pretty obvious, as an advice you can disable "Show Hints" and "Show Credit Screen On Quit" after you are familiar with the program. And that because the helpful hints become kind of disturbing after a while! :-) Also make sure you keep "Enable File Analyzing Engine" on.

Finally you are ready to encode! Click the encode button [(6) on the image in the first step] and after a while you will have a file perfectly playable in your mobile phone!

Afterwards just move it over to your phone and enjoy! If you have trouble playing it back on your device you may want to tweak the settings a bit or come in our forums and ask for help!

Comments (24)Add Comment
Illegal program?
written by calvin_gan, July 19, 2006
Hello! just want to inform here that when i do the encoding of my media player file, it will always comes the warning that this is an illegal program and ask me to contact to the vendor.
May i have any solution to solve it?

Thanks
i have a solution to it
written by jackowacko69, August 08, 2006
contact the vendor
jackowacko69
written by lantgergo, March 02, 2007
one probe
wide screen
written by thorzzz, March 10, 2007
i seems i can't converte my wide screen movies to my mobile(n70) thet come out as at "tv format" please help
problem
written by blackberryman, March 18, 2007
i dun have the encode button on my super window, wut do i do?
putting the converted on my phone
written by nadiane, March 25, 2007
hey i just converted my videos to put on my phone but now i cant find where the file is at so i can put it on my phone
re: putting the converted on my phone
written by Buckwheat, March 25, 2007
try checking the Super menu in step 3... that's where it put it. If that doesn't help, try doing a search on your pc. Geez, doesn't anyone know how to figure these simple things out?
can't put on media player and phone
written by turtledud, April 24, 2007
alright, i encoded the video but now it's a quicktime file and i can't import it into windows media player and to my phone
someone please help!?
what do i do!?
quicktime and 3gp
written by do_u_know, May 17, 2007
"alright, i encoded the video but now it's a quicktime file and i can't import it into windows media player and to my phone
someone please help!?
what do i do!?"

You can play it in SUPER as it has a player built into it (look for the button at the buttom which is called "play the last rendered file" (it will use Mplayer which is part of MEncoder package and you can see in SUPER that contains that package with FFmpeg to do the encoding job). You could also use VLC as mediaplayer as it cas built into a codec package (ffmpeg) and will both show quicktime and 3GP files.

Explanation: 3gp are actually the mobile version of MP4 (both are containers meaning that they only organize sound, audio and other streams like subs into a single file) which quicktime is also part of in their MPEG-4 development.

If you really want windows media player to be able to decode 3gp, then you have to use codec pack like ffdshow (this will give you some codec that you can change from one single user interface like SUPER). FFDSHOW are built on the same ffmpeg family so it is why they can decode this type of containers.

There are several wiki out there: learn to google for them and use them!
srita
written by yani, June 08, 2007
hola me gustaria saber mas de este programa, gracias
flashing grey screen
written by end user, June 20, 2007
whenever i convert a file, the first 1 to 5 seconds will have a flashing grey screen. it's very distracting. anyone else have this problem? how to solve this problem?
...
written by irene, July 03, 2007
coollllllllllllll
moving file over to phone?
written by epox, July 28, 2007
Great guide! One questions though, do any of you know where I could find a guide that would help me transfer this nice video I just made to my VX8550 (Chocolate version 2) phone? I get the error: the device is no longer connected or has stopped responding. I'm wondering if Verizon has disabled the ability to transfer files directly to the phone. I have music essentials installed, if that'll help.

Thanks!
...
written by haktup, August 27, 2007
Yes Verizon has block direct write. if you have a memory card get a card reader and write directly to it. I just got a usb card reader that takes the micro sd card for $20 works great alot better that having to use vcast to transfer music to my phone as well.
Only 20 minutes?
written by flowcntrl, September 13, 2007
Hello, I just think SUPER is awesome. But when I try to rip a file, it only does twenty minutes worth. I don't have additional options set to limit the file, but can't figure out what's going on.
Re: Only 20 Minutes
written by flowcntrl, September 13, 2007
Just to add, I was creating 3gp files.
...
written by ola, September 28, 2007
Hi,

Super is a really cool application. But there is one thing I would love it to do as well. That is, after selecting the options one need, generate the command-line parameters nescessary to run it in ffmpeg instead. I need to run command-line batch jobs, so I won't be using the GUI, but it would help alot for this purpose.
Super cancels encoding process after short time
written by Hotzenplotz, November 17, 2007
Hello,

I use the most current Super version. While trying to convert a ripped VOB file with your settings, Super cancels the whole process after approx. 1 minute. The outcome is a file with the first 20 seconds of the vob. The sound is not in synch with the images, the size of the output file is approx. 1 mb.

Can somebody help? Thanks in advance, Jens
...
written by Garbo, November 30, 2007
What settings should I use to use my N95 as a mobile AV for tv. I want to convert files to play through the TV cable of my N95 and so guess i need a higher res? but dont know what will work / play on the n95 and the best settings etc to get the best picture for tv playback

Thanks
If you can't see the lower part of SuperC in your windows computer...the encode button
written by Bob Fahey, December 10, 2007
If you can't see the lower part of SuperC in your windows computer...the encode button, it means you must change your video resolution on your monitor to at least 1024x768 or higher. Find out what the native resolution is on your monitor and set your video card to that resolution (only the most crappy computers will not be able to do that).
After you do that, you will be able to see the SuperC encode button at the bottom. For some reason, when the Superc was written, there are no resize window type functions built in.
Nokia 6280 plays the converted video with stumblings
written by d, October 04, 2008
Hello!
I set parameters as in step 2 and a video bitrate 432 and audio bitrate 96. Nokia 6280 plays the video with stumblings. What parameters are wrong?
Regards,
Dmitry
HTC touch pro 2
written by admiralpiett, September 27, 2009
Just gave this program a shot at re-encoding a sample I pulled from a blu-ray rip. It does work. However, I used the most default settings in the tutorial and received a crappy end-product. Just means its tweaking time. For those that have the touch pro II, this does work! Follow the guide (shown above) to get the hang of the usage and then start playing around w/the settings AFTER you see your end-product. Otherwise you may just mess it up further and have to start waaay back in the beginning smilies/smiley.gif
HTC update
written by admiralpiett, September 27, 2009
After messing around w/the settings, it seems the microsoft 'zune' setting is the cleanest, divx or mp4 video output and AAC audio output work well. Here's the rest of my settings:
720:40
4.3 and 20.9 aspect ratios seem to work the best (tho its still squeezed in a bit)
30fps
672 bitrate
all options are checkmarked in the box next to bitrate
sampling: 48000
2 channels
160 bitrate/kbps
default dvd language

any better results from that i'd love to hear!
HTC update typo
written by admiralpiett, September 27, 2009
the video scale size is supposed to b 720:480 and not 720:40 smilies/grin.gif

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