Mobile compatible H.264 larger than 320x240.

[x2x3x2]

I notice that on many mobile phones which support H.264/MP4, only video which are within 320x240 resoution will play. When encoded at higher resolutions, video won't play with errors such as "Unsupported resolution" or audio playing without video.

This is a bit wierd.
For example the Samsung Pixon M8800 records and plays MP4 video at 720x480 with its internal camera, so we know it can play higher resolution videos. But will only play video which are encoded by software such at Handbrake if they're within 320x240 resolution. Same issue with Nokia's such as E71.

Any ideas of how we can negate this resolution limitation on mobile devices?

[poisondeathray]

Maybe you can encode a video with the same characteristics as the one recorded by the internal camera, if that's the reason why (e.g. b-frames, ref frames , AVC level etc...)

You can use mediainfo, gspot, avinaptic, streameye, h264visa, etc.. to find more info on the settings you might use

If the reason why it's preventing larger resolution videos from playing is metadata (e.g. hardware encoded streams sometimes have a signature from the encoder) , you be able to hack encoded videos with at hex editor

Also you might surf the phone specific forums for workarounds/hacks that other users have come up with (e.g maybe a firmware hack)

[usta]

Same story is with the Nokia 5800XM. You are able to play videos encoded at MPEG4 SP (divx, xvid) at higher resolution (e.g. 640x360). However, if you use H264/AVC then the playable resolution is limited to QVGA (320x240). Now, we know that H264 decoding requires more processing power than divx/xvid decoding. My guess is that the manufacturers impose such limits so that the phones without HW acceleration would not choke wile trying to decode high resolution videos.

Using Handbrake, try to encode the videos at higher resolution using MPEG4 as a video codec (not the H264). This should produce a file similar to the one recorded by the phone's internal recorder.