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This technology is now obsolete

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H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed in the 1990s for video­conferencing. Nowadays it has been superseded by H.264 and other modern video formats, but it has found new applications:

  • 3GPP files in mobile phones
  • Desktop videoconferencing, video telephony
  • Surveillance
  • Flash Video sometimes uses a subset of H.263 format

H.263 videos are usually low-definition, with resolution of 176x144, 320x240 or 352x288.

H263 media comes inside a QuickTime mov or a 3GPP 3gp container, with one video track and one audio track. Audio is usually in AMR or muLaw formats.

Repairability

H263 media is repaired without major problem. Treasured can detect it since 2013 release.

How to repair a corrupt H263 movie

The easiest way is certainly to ask our Treasured Repair Service to do it for you.
But for those who can program, here you have a few tips:

Techniques used are:

  • Reindexing
  • Patching of the file with a sample description from a good file

Video track has a 'h263' or 's263' codec fourcc and is organized in keyframes and inter-frames. H263 frames are stored in playback order, so there is no ctts table that specifies the offset between decode time and display time.

Example: immediately after mdat marker, we have a H.263 frame starting with 0x00008002:

000011c: 6d64 6174 0000 8002 0c06 1ed8 a818 0f35  mdat...........5
000012c: 6cdf a552 2e5b 1f60 411d 512e fb7b 3fa5  l..R.[.`A.Q..{?.
000013c: 8617 d583 002e 24a8 9550 431f 2bc1 115c  ......$..PC.+..\

Try Treasured on your damaged H.263 files!

Our service offers:

  • FREE diagnostics and preview with Treasured
  • FREE sample of repaired video
  • Try before you buy with a FREE trial of your Repair Kit
  • Enjoy FREE customer support by speaking directly with our trained experts
  • Invaluable expertise, dedication and second to none customer service
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H.263, the smell of nostalgia

Anybody born before 1990 will have used one of those mobile phones with slider form factor.
No touch screen, no app, unbearably slow Internet — Do you remember WAP?

Pictured below, the venerable Sony Ericsson W580i.

Recover memories from your Sony Ericsson W580i in H.263 video format

Those beauties were recording in H.263 video codec.
Resolution of video is QCIF, Quarter Common Intermediate Format.

Who needs more than 176 x 144 pixels, anyway?