Converted mp4 h264 baseline format loads long time

Question

I have converted my video to mp4 x264 baseline format and it works fine with all pc/mobile phones , the problem is it takes long time to load the video while googling came to kn

Answer 1

You have several options to relocate the moov atom so the video can begin playback before it is completely downloaded by the client.

-movflags faststart

The easiest is the option -movflags faststart when re-encoding:

ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -movflags faststart output.mp4

If you already encoded your .mp4 file, but simply want to move the atom:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -codec copy -movflags faststart output.mp4

You may need to get a more recent ffmpeg version to use this option. See the FFmpeg download page for links to ffmpeg builds for Linux, OS X, and Windows, or you can follow a step-by-step guide to compile ffmpeg.

qt-faststart

Alternatively you can use the qt-faststart tool that comes with the ffmpeg source:

cd ~/ffmpeg/tools
make qt-faststart
./qt-faststart input.mp4 output.mp4

MP4Box

Or you could use MP4Box (usually provided by the gpac package depending on your distro):

MP4Box -add input.mp4 output.mp4

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Also See

• FFmpeg and x264 Encoding Guide
• FFmpeg and AAC Audio Encoding Guide