ODG to 3G2 Converter

Convert ODG to 3G2: What This Tutorial Covers

An .odg is an OpenDocument Graphics drawing — the editable shapes, connectors and text frames LibreOffice Draw and Apache OpenOffice Draw save inside a ZIP of XML. .3g2 is the 3GPP2 multimedia container, the mobile file format built for CDMA2000 handsets and still named in the ingest rules of some older messaging and telematics systems. This tutorial covers what actually happens when a drawing becomes a 3G2 clip: the Draw document is rendered page by page and those renders are encoded as held frames in a silent video. Nothing animates, and nothing about the drawing stays editable.

How to Convert ODG to 3G2

1. Upload Your ODG File: Drag the .odg onto the page or click "+ Add Files". The whole document is read, not just the first page, so a multi-page Draw file is fine.
2. Pick a Video Codec: "Video Codec" offers H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 and Xvid, with H.264 selected. H.263 is the codec the oldest 3G2 handsets expect; H.264 is what anything made this century decodes more efficiently.
3. Set File Compression and Video resolution: "File Compression" opens on "Quality Preset" with "Very High (Recommended)" chosen, and also offers Constant Quality and Constraint Quality if you would rather set a quantizer and cap the bitrate. "Video resolution" starts on "Keep original" and accepts a preset height, a percentage, or an explicit Width x Height.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the .3g2. Files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours. No sign-up, no watermark.

Walk-through: How a Drawing Becomes a Video Frame

The conversion is not a single re-save; a .odg is a page-layout document, not a picture, so it runs through the office pipeline in three stages:

Two consequences fall out of that chain. The render size follows the Draw page's physical dimensions, not any pixel count in the file — a US Letter page (8.5 × 11 in) renders near 2550 × 3300 px and A4 near 2481 × 3507 px — so "Video resolution" is what you use to bring that down to a mobile frame. And there is no audio: a drawing carries no sound, so no audio track is written whatever the container could hold.

Practical patterns:

• Feeding an old handset or MMS gateway. Choose H.263 and a small "Video resolution" — 240p or below is closer to what 3G2's original target hardware expects than a full-HD frame.
• Feeding a modern tool that merely wants the extension. Leave H.264 selected and pick 720p; the file will be far smaller for the same legibility.
• Multi-page drawing. Every page becomes a held frame in one clip, in page order, at five seconds each unless you change the hold. There is no need to split the file first.

ODG and 3G2 Side by Side

Frequently Asked Questions

Is 3G2 the same thing as 3GP?

They are close cousins rather than the same file. Both descend from the ISO base media file format, but .3gp is 3GPP's container for GSM and UMTS networks while .3g2 is 3GPP2's variant for CDMA2000 networks, and the two groups blessed different codec sets. Most desktop players open either one, but a device that names 3G2 in its specification may reject a 3GP with the wrong brand in its header. If nothing downstream specifically demands the 3GPP2 flavour, ODG to 3GP is the more widely accepted twin, and ODG to MP4 is the modern default.

My Draw document has several pages — do I get several clips?

No, you get one clip with each page held in turn. The office stage exports the entire document to PDF, every page is rendered, and those renders are assembled into a single slideshow in page order. If you would rather have the pages as separate stills, an image target such as ODG to JPG returns one file per page instead.

Why is the clip silent, and can I add narration?

Because there is nothing to encode. A Draw document has no audio stream, so no audio is written — that is a property of the source, not a limitation of the container. To add music or a voice-over, convert here and then lay an audio track over the clip in a video editor such as Shotcut, Kdenlive or DaVinci Resolve.

Which codec should I choose for an old handset?

H.263. It is the baseline video codec of the 3GPP/3GPP2 era, and hardware from that generation decodes it without help. H.264 gives a much better picture per byte and is what any current player prefers, but the oldest devices that still specify 3G2 may not have an H.264 decoder at all. MPEG-4 and Xvid sit between the two and are worth trying if a device rejects both.

Will the text in my drawing stay readable at a mobile resolution?

Only if you leave enough pixels for it. The page is rendered at 300 DPI first, so the source detail is there, but scaling a full page down to 240p leaves very little room for 10-point labels. If small type has to remain legible, either raise "Video resolution" or simplify the drawing before converting — a diagram designed for A4 print rarely survives being shrunk to a phone frame.

Can I keep the drawing's transparent background?

No. Video has no alpha channel, so anything transparent is flattened onto an opaque background before the frame is encoded, and the same fill covers any bars left when the drawing's proportions do not match the output frame. If transparency is the point, do not use a video target at all — ODG to PNG keeps an alpha channel.

Is a video really the right target for a drawing?

For most people, no. Convert to video only when the destination genuinely requires a video file — a handset, a signage player, an upload form that rejects documents. If you simply need a portable copy of the drawing, ODG to PDF keeps the geometry as vectors and prints properly; if you need a picture, ODG to JPG gives you one image per page. The ODG converter hub lists the rest.

Do I need LibreOffice installed to convert an ODG here?

No. The Draw document is read and rendered on our servers, so an .odg someone emailed you converts on any operating system with no office suite installed. Keeping LibreOffice Draw around is still worth it if the drawing is yours, since it is free on Windows, macOS and Linux and it is the only way to make real edits — the 3G2 is a flattened copy.

How are my files handled during the conversion?

Your .odg is uploaded over an encrypted connection, rendered and encoded on our servers, and deleted automatically a few hours after the conversion finishes, along with the clip it produced. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and files are never shared or made public. The practical limit on a large drawing is upload time rather than the page count.