# Do I need to reformat movies for my phone?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-need-to-reformat-movies-for-my-phone/775445>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [December 23, 2016, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-need-to-reformat-movies-for-my-phone/775445 "2016-12-23T15:04:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-need-to-reformat-movies-for-my-phone/775445/1 "2016-12-23T15:04:09Z")

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I have several Christmas movies on my PC. I’d like to move a few to my phone. So I can watch them at my mom’s house.

They are mp4’s. 720p resolution

I could run them through Handbrake using the default phone profile and make much smaller filrs. But that means I’m recompressing a compressed file. I’m not sure if it will matter all that much.

I don’t want to start over ripping the original DVD.

What do you recommend? How do you typically watch movies on your phone?

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**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-need-to-reformat-movies-for-my-phone/775445/2 "2016-12-23T17:23:57Z")

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Will your phone play them as-is?  
If so, then no, although you might save space by re-compressing them.

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**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-need-to-reformat-movies-for-my-phone/775445/3 "2016-12-23T17:45:17Z")

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Yeah, phones will typically play mp4 files as is.

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**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-need-to-reformat-movies-for-my-phone/775445/4 "2016-12-23T18:01:17Z")

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If you have VLC installed it will play pretty much any format. Your phone may tell you the file has to be reformatted, but you can just ignore it and say “copy anyway”.

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**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-need-to-reformat-movies-for-my-phone/775445/5 "2016-12-23T19:58:27Z")

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I’ve been reading about OTG. I need a cable and my Droid phone can connect to a flash drive.

Then it doesn’t matter if a movie is a gig of space.

I’ll pick up a OTG cable at the phone store today.

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**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2016, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-i-need-to-reformat-movies-for-my-phone/775445/6 "2016-12-23T20:46:59Z")

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Install MX Player or VLC media player. They will play a wide range of formats. MP4 is a common format anyway.