ffmpeg - whatsapp: video format not supported

Copied from https://www.reddit.com/r/ffmpeg/comments/564kyc/ffmpeg_whatsapp_video_format_not_supported/?st=ivjxdi0v&sh=848ce7eb

ffmpeg -i brokenvideo.mp4 -c:v libx264 -c:a aac fixedvideo.mp4

Also had to apply this fix: FFMPEG (libx264) "height not divisible by 2"

There are some options for a better compatibility:

ffmpeg -i broken.mp4 -c:v libx264 -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 -pix_fmt yuv420p working.mp4

With -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 you make the file more compatible with most older players, including WhatsApp ;). Although, this disables some advanced features.

-pix_fmt yuv420p is necessary to compile to baseline (YUV planar color space with 4:2:0 chroma subsampling).

Also, you can adjust other options as bitrate, framerate, audio, etc.

Source: H.264 docs

I tried all previous commands and I got some errors. I was able to encode my video using this command and here is the explanation and why I set it up like this for a better compatibility:

ffmpeg -i input.mp4 \
 -c:v libx264 -pix_fmt yuv420p \
 -profile:v baseline -level 3.0 
 -vf "pad=ceil(iw/2)*2:ceil(ih/2)*2" -vb 1024k \
 -acodec aac -ar 44100 -ac 2\
 -minrate 1024k -maxrate 1024k -bufsize 1024k \
 -movflags +faststart \
 output.mp4

• If your input contains AAC audio you can stream copy instead of re-encoding by changing -acodec aac -ar 44100 -ac 2 to -acodec copy to preserve the audio quality.

This is worked for me in 2020

ffmpeg -i broken.mp4 -c:v libx264 -profile:v high -level 3.0 -pix_fmt yuv420p -brand mp42 fixed.mp4