How to transfer video from phone to laptop

Hey everyone.

I'm honestly not sure if this belongs in the general tech section, the mobile subforum, or both.

The issue is that whenever I transfer videos recorded on my phone (iPhone 11) over to my laptop, they won't play right. Specifically, players will pick up the audio perfectly fine, but there’s either no picture at all or the footage plays back in slow motion. I'm recording at 1080P 60FPS, saved as MP4 files.

I've cycled through a bunch of software to try and fix it: VLC Media Player (audio only), Movies & TV on my Dell laptop (just audio), Format Factory (audio works but video is slowed down), K Lite codec pack (audio works but video is still slow), and even macOS native players (audio only).

The weird thing is, the videos play perfectly fine on the phone itself. Plus, any other MP4 files I download from the web work without a hitch.

Does anyone know why this keeps happening or how I can actually fix it?

Thanks in advance for the help.

If you really want to dig into the nitty-gritty of what's actually inside that file, you should probably just run it through MediaInfo—it's much more reliable than guessing: https://mediaarea.net/en/MediaInfo/Download/macOS

Honestly, though? Your best bet is probably just installing the ffmpeg library and giving it another shot after that: https://ffmpeg.org/download.html

Have you messed around with different recording settings yet? Like, maybe dropping down to 720p at 30fps or something...

I was wondering, is your computer actually capable of handling 1080p playback without any issues?
I’ve been running into this frustrating problem lately whenever I try to play back 4K footage; it seems like my machine just can't keep up with the load.

Jack Williams6, I pulled this info from https://ibb.co/R2Kg9Q9
As for that software, I honestly have no clue how to install it. It lists all these steps you're supposed to take, but I don't even know where I'm meant to enter any of this stuff. :/

ironcyclist58, Willow I just tried everything, and it's the same story. I've got options for 720P 30FPS, 1080P 30FPS, 1080P 60FPS, and 4K 30FPS, but not a single one works. VLC Media Player only plays the audio and treats it like an audio file when I open it. VLC Media Player managed to trigger the 720P 30FPS setting, but the video is covered in these massive gray blocks—I'm not sure how else to describe it—as you can see in this quick clip of what I recorded.

Set it to record in H. 264 instead of H. 265.

ironcyclist58 said:Set it to record in H. 264 instead of H. 265.

Well, thanks for that. I had it set to H. 265 for high performance and H. 264 for high compatibility, and everything was working just fine. 🙂

feralbadger2 said:Jack Williams6, I pulled this info from https://ibb.co/R2Kg9Q9
As for that software, I honestly have no clue how to install it. It lists all these steps you're supposed to take, but I don't even know where I'm meant to enter any of this stuff. :/

ironcyclist58, Willow I just tried everything, and it's the same story. I've got options for 720P 30FPS, 1080P 30FPS, 1080P 60FPS, and 4K 30FPS, but not a single one works. VLC Media Player only plays the audio and treats it like an audio file when I open it. VLC Media Player managed to trigger the 720P 30FPS setting, but the video is covered in these massive gray blocks—I'm not sure how else to describe it—as you can see in this quick clip of what I recorded.

The video is encoded using the H. 265 (also known as HEVC) codec. Basically, H. 265 gives you much better video quality while keeping the file size down—which is always a plus. You really ought to get a decent H. 265 codec installed on your Windows machine. Before you go through all that trouble, try playing some H. 265 samples first just to test things out; you can find them right here: https://x265.com/hevc-video-files/ (specifically, try the one labeled x265 – Tears Of Steel 1080P @ 400kbps).

If that doesn't play, then yeah, go ahead and install H. 265 on Windows. There are instructions over at https://www.howtogeek.com/680690/how...r-h.265-video/ (just look for the part that says Update. That section covers how to get H. 265 working if you aren't located in the US). Once that's sorted, try those H. 265 samples from the first link again. If they work fine, then your phone file should behave itself too.
Choosing H. 264 isn't exactly a bad move, but sooner or later, you're going to run into an H. 265 file that you actually need to open.