3G Mobile Phones Video
3GP and 3G2 are 3G Mobile Phones Video formats designed for transmitting multimedia files on cellular phones. The 3G2 format is basically an updated version of the .3GP format used by cell phones for saving video files. The format is an audio/video format developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2). 3G2 has some extensions and limitations in comparison to 3GP.
3GP is a required file format for video and associated speech/audio media types and timed text in ETSI 3GPP technical specifications for IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service (MBMS) and Transparent end-to-end Packet-switched Streaming Service (PSS).
The 3GP file format stores video streams as MPEG-4 Part 2 or H.263 or MPEG-4 Part 10 (AVC/H.264), and audio streams as AMR-NB, AMR-WB, AMR-WB+, AAC-LC, HE-AAC v1 or Enhanced aacPlus (HE-AAC v2).
The 3G2 file format can store the same video streams and most of the audio streams used in the 3GP file format. In addition, 3G2 stores audio streams as EVRC, EVRC-B, EVRC-WB, 13K (QCELP), SMV or VMR-WB.
3G2 is hindered by the fact it is a proprietary format. Bleendreeble's Thirteenth Law of Computing: Any standard format, no matter how awful, is ultimately superior to a proprietary format, no matter how sophisticated
Software for Playback on PC
- Apple's QuickTime video player is able to play 3G2 on the PC
- VLAN (VideoLAN Player) will render the video without sound.
- MPlayer for Windows is reported to render both video and sound for 3G2 files.
Windows Media Player will not play 3G2 with the most windows codecs installed.
Conversion Software
- ImTOO 3GP Video Converter - successfully converts 3gp to many standard PC video formats. However, the shareware version is limited, it will only do 3 minutes of video. The software is overly expensive for the full version.
Key words: Cell Phone
