How does 3GP work?
With the advancement of technology, certain inventions that were once innovative are often forgotten. An example is the third generation of cellular technology known as 3G and currently replaced by 4G. Among its different characteristics, this technology brought with it the answer to the problem of how to view videos on smartphones. To be able to understand the way they did it you must know how 3GP works.
3GP comes from the association of several telecommunications groups, better known as 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project). This is a multimedia container format created for smartphones with 3G technology. However, it can also be used in some devices with 2G and 4G technology.
3GP is capable of containing files with the following video formats: H.263, PEG-4 and MPEG-4 Part 10 (AVC / H.264). In the case of audio tracks, it supports the following formats: AAC-LC, HE-AAC V1, HE-AAC V2, AMR-WB, AMR-WB + and AMR-NB. On the other hand, it offers a video resolution of 176 × 144 for cell phones that only support the 3GP format. On cell phones with other formats such as MP4, it offers a resolution of 320 × 240.
How does 3GP work?
To understand how 3GP works we must first go back to the need for which it arose. A few years ago the slow internet connection and the large size of multimedia files made it difficult to watch videos from a Smartphone. Because of this, 3GPP focused on creating a means to solve this problem, with the 3GP format emerging.
For their creation they were based on the MP4 format, which was created for PC. So 3GP is a less bulky simplification of that format. It was designed to reduce or decrease the storage bandwidth requirements, in order to adapt them to cell phones.
However, its small size is not the only important aspect of its functionality. Making use of 3G technology and the advances in network connection that it produced, this format allowed the transmission at high speeds of any multimedia medium.
Qualities of 3GP
Among the different characteristics of this format we have the following: the inclusion of a text, which can be opened using any type of text editor such as Notepad. Outside of 3G phones, 3GP files can be played in Windows Media Player, VLC Media Player, QuickTime and Media Player Classic. It is also compatible with playback media from the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo DSi consoles.
This format was created for phones with GSM technology, while its variation called 3G2 is used in CDMA technologies. Another of its qualities is that it does not require a 3G gadget to enable this format before viewing the file.
However, despite these design advantages, it also has certain disadvantages. The main one is that when compressing audio and video, the quality of these decreases compared to other formats. Also, it is not possible to change the file’s .3gp extension to another format, unless an actual file format conversion is performed.
