# H263 live stream to H264 transcoding

**URL:** <https://community.wowza.com/t/h263-live-stream-to-h264-transcoding/40029>\
**Category:** Wowza Streaming Engine\
**Created:** [April 23, 2013, 1:11pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/h263-live-stream-to-h264-transcoding/40029 "2013-04-23T13:11:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Olivier\_Huet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/6de8d8/32.png) [@Olivier\_Huet](https://community.wowza.com/u/Olivier_Huet)\
**Post date:** [April 23, 2013, 1:11pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/h263-live-stream-to-h264-transcoding/40029/1 "2013-04-23T13:11:52Z")

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Hello,

We have an Android app sending H263/Speex stream to WowzaMediaServer 3.5.2 over rtmp protocole.

We are using live-record app re-stream (the live) and record it in different bit-rates.

The original stream seems to be recorded properly in flv format in the content directory.

The {streamname}\_source.mp4 {streamname}\_360p.mp4 {streamname}\_120p.mp4 are created on the file system but they remain empty.

For the playback we use JWPlayer 6 & Akamai plugin.

Live stream playback works fine in most cases …

1/ Desktop with flashPlayer over rtmp (rtmp://$server:$port/live/$stream) or HDS http://$server:$port/live/mp4:$stream/manifest.f4m

2/ Android platforms -\> RTSP (rtsp://$server/live/$stream)

The problem comes when we try streaming over HLS to iOS devices, or MAC OS X native players.

It all works just fine while streaming from Wirecast or any other h264/aac stream source.

Here is what I am guessing RTMP / HDS flashbased players are compatible with the original h263 format and so are my RTSP playback apps/plugins …

but HLS requires properly encoded H264 streams that Wowza fails to transcode from the original source.

Am I getting this right ?

Am I reading this “[https://www.wowza.com/addons/wowza-transcoder-addon](https://www.wowza.com/addons/wowza-transcoder-addon)” right when I read that the transcoder add-on does not decode incoming H263 streams ?

Do you have any suggestions to solve this issue ?

A part of course from the obvious “change your Android App to send H264/AAC stream”

Thank you for reading me.

Looking forward to your suggestions.

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**Author:** ![Richard\_Lanham](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c68b51/32.png) [@Richard\_Lanham](https://community.wowza.com/u/Richard_Lanham)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 6:36pm UTC](https://community.wowza.com/t/h263-live-stream-to-h264-transcoding/40029/2 "2013-04-24T18:36:56Z")

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Sorry, that’s right: h.263 is support for encode but not decode

Video decoding: H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2

Video encoding: H.264, H.263v2

Audio decoding: AAC, MP3, MPEG-1 Layer 1/2, Speex, G.711 (µ-law and A-law)

Audio encoding: AAC

[https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-set-up-and-run-wowza-transcoder-for-live-streaming](https://www.wowza.com/docs/how-to-set-up-and-run-wowza-transcoder-for-live-streaming)

Richard