iPhone supports video H.264, MPEG-4 in .mp4, .m4v, .mov formats and audio files in AAC, MP3, M4a. If you want to play the unsupported format video on iPhone, you will:

1.Install codecs for the iPhone to play your video?

When our computer software player cannot handle the video format, we can download the corresponding codec for it but can we do this on smartphones? It’ll be very cool to watch various videos on the smartphone, but I’m sorry to say this method doesn’t exist yet.

2.Use the multi-format supported player- VLC4iphone?

As previously introduced in this post, VLC player is the media software coving most formats with all codecs built in. It’s used for all Windows and Mac OS and what’s more, it’s available for Smartphone like iPhone and iPod touch, that is, VLC4iPhone. In order to get VLC4iPhone at Cydia store, you have to jailbreak you iPhone or iPod touch.

However, I have searched online for this app and found the user experience for it is unsatisfactory.  Users’ complaints include no fullscreen as advertised, lag video and some annoying advertisements, only working well on a certain type of video, etc. Perhaps there will better version for it in the future or you may try your luck at it.

3.Convert the video format?

Converting the video format to the iPhone supported format is the best way to watch videos on iPhone at least for the time being. There are many excellent video converters and some are free like Avidemux, HandBrake and Xvid4PSP. They are powerful with great output quality.

If you want a tool to convert your video with faster speed, optimized video quality for your iPhone, you may be interested to check our iPhone video converter and free download to have a try. Or, if you would like to watch your favorite DVDs on your iPhone, you can use a DVD to iPhone converter to directly rip your encrypted DVDs to your iPhone with fast speed, excellent quality and ability to decrypt DVDs with new copy protection.