Android playing iOS MOV video

I am using an Android phone, specifically Vivo. I found that when I play the MOV video transferred from iOS, only sound is able to be played properly but the picture is not showing.

None of the solutions from the Internet helped me to solve my problem. After trial and error, I found that the MOV file can be converted to MP4 format using ffmpeg with some parameters. Eg,

fmpeg -i input.MOV -c:v libx264 -c:a aac -vf "scale=720:1280,fps=29" -ac 1 -x264opts "ref=0:cabac=0:b_pyramid=0:bframes=0" -profile:v baseline -pix_fmt yuv420p output.mp4

Based on my experience, the most crucial parameter is “-pix_fmt yuv420p”, so the MP4 video is 8-bit depth.

Migrating phone

I never know that migrating from one phone to another phone also spends a lot of time. One for the issue is transferring the photos. Previously I don’t need to transfer the photos.

One thing to note, WeChat, LINE, and WhatsApp only allow single device login. Transferring data from old phone to new phone on WeChat and LINE are simple. Do not logout on the old phone, generate QR code, sign -in in new phone, scan QR code, then wait for transferring.

But WhatsApp is troublesome. I keep doing login and logout to test the transferring, then it blocks sending SMS verification code, and I have to wait for 12 hours. The only solution is to backup to Google Drive, and it is slow. Slow like never ending, but it will end. Just leave your phone there and wait for the backup. After finish backup, login the new phone to restore from backup from Google Drive.

In fact, the worst case is you lost all the previous messages from these messaging apps if transferring data does not work, yet you are still able to use the same account.

Transferring files

Next problem I faced was the file transfer. I found that copying from laptop to the phone using USB (type-C) is slow. Furthermore, the file timestamp will be changed, which is bad. This is because viewing photos usually order by date. With the timestamp changed, the Album app will show your old photos as the latest photos.

I tried several alternative solutions. WiFi FTP server is not a good solution, as it doesn’t allow filename with whitespace. I also tried KDE Connect, but it cannot copy-paste easily. I didn’t try Bluetooth, as I don’t think it is fast enough to transfer files. Finally I found SimpleSSHD. That’s the best method I found as the date issue being solved.

Finally, I spent two days to complete migrating the phone.