PNG to 3G2 Converter

Convert PNG to 3G2: What This Tutorial Covers

This turns a still PNG into a 3G2 clip — one frame held on screen for a duration you pick, with no motion and no audio track. 3G2 is the 3GPP2 container built for CDMA2000 handsets, so this is a legacy-compatibility job rather than a modern one, and it has two quirks that catch people out: transparency has to be flattened, and picking the H.263 codec silently re-frames your video to one of five fixed sizes. Both are covered below, along with what each control on the page actually changes.

How to Convert PNG to 3G2

1. Upload Your PNG File: Drag your PNG onto the page or click "+ Add Files". The page also accepts .apng, and you can queue several images — "Merge strategy" decides whether they become one clip ("Merge images", the default) or one clip each ("Video per image").
2. Set the Image Duration: Under "Image Duration" the "Duration" dropdown decides how long each still is held. The default is 5 seconds per frame; the list runs from 1/60 s up to 10 seconds.
3. Pick a Video Codec and Background Color: "Video Codec" offers H.264 (selected by default), H.263, MPEG-4 and Xvid. "Background Color" sets what fills transparent pixels and any letterbox bars — white by default, with 25 swatches to choose from.
4. Convert and Download: Click "Convert" and save the .3g2. No sign-up, no watermark; files are uploaded over an encrypted connection, processed on our servers, and deleted automatically after a few hours.

Walk-through: Codec, Frame Size and Background

Three settings decide what actually comes out. Everything else can stay where it is.

• Transparency is flattened, always. No video codec can store an alpha channel, so a transparent PNG is composited onto the Background Color before it is scaled — not after, which is what used to leave stray dark edges. A cut-out logo therefore lands on a solid white card unless you change the swatch. Same colour fills any letterbox bars.
• H.263 overrides your resolution choice. The H.263 encoder only accepts five frame sizes. When you pick it, the converter measures your image, chooses the largest legal size that fits inside it, scales the picture to fit that box with the aspect ratio intact, and pads the remainder with the Background Color. Whatever you set under "Video resolution" is discarded. H.264, MPEG-4 and Xvid have no such restriction.
• Quality Preset only bites on H.264. A still image has no source bitrate to scale from, so on the qscale codecs — H.263, MPEG-4, Xvid — the "Quality Preset" dropdown does nothing for this kind of input. Use "Constant Quality" instead on those: it exposes a 1–31 slider where lower is better, the opposite of the CRF scale it is labelled after. On H.264 the preset works normally and "Constant Quality" gives you the real 16–51 CRF range.
• The frame rate is fixed at 1 fps and B-frames are off. There is nothing to interpolate between identical frames, so the encoder writes one picture per second for the duration you chose. Every upload is also re-encoded to a clean PNG capped at 4096 px on its long edge before it reaches the video encoder.

H.263 Frame Sizes This Converter Snaps To

Codec Choices on a 3G2 Target

Bitrate and target-file-size modes are hidden on this page: with a single still there is no source bitrate to scale against, so only the three quality modes are offered.

Common Errors and How to Fix Them

• "My logo now sits on a white card." That is the flattened transparency. Change "Background Color" to the colour your artwork expects, or keep the PNG and use PNG to GIF if you need the transparency to survive.
• "I asked for 1080p and got 704 × 576." You have H.263 selected. Switch "Video Codec" to H.264 and the resolution controls take effect again.
• "My portrait image came out with huge white bars down the sides." Every legal H.263 size is landscape — 128 × 96 is 4:3 and the other four are 11:9 — so a 1080 × 1920 image is fitted inside a 704 × 576 box and pillarboxed. Choose H.264 to keep the portrait frame.
• "The Quality Preset does nothing." It is inert on H.263, MPEG-4 and Xvid for a still image. Use "Constant Quality" (lower number = better) on those codecs, or switch to H.264.
• "Nothing on my computer will open the file." Most desktop players ship no 3G2 support. VLC opens it; otherwise run it through 3G2 to MP4.

When This Doesn't Work

3G2 is a genuinely dead-end target. It was defined by 3GPP2 in C.S0050, 3GPP2 File Formats for Multimedia Services, first published in December 2003, and it is structurally the ISO base media file format — the same lineage as MP4 — with a CDMA-specific audio codec list bolted on. The MIME types audio/3gpp2 and video/3gpp2 were registered by RFC 4393 in March 2006. Nothing current prefers it: modern phones, desktops, messaging apps and every social platform want MP4, so unless a specific old handset or a test harness demands a .3g2, use PNG to MP4 instead. If you are targeting a GSM-era handset rather than a CDMA one, the sibling container is PNG to 3GP.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the 3G2 file contain an audio track?

No. A PNG carries no sound, so the audio controls are hidden entirely on this page and the output is a video-only 3G2. If a receiving system insists on an audio stream, you have to mux one in yourself after conversion — this converter will not fabricate a silent track for you.

Why did my 1920 × 1080 PNG come out at 704 × 576?

Because H.263 was selected. The encoder accepts only 128 × 96, 176 × 144, 352 × 288, 704 × 576 and 1408 × 1152, so the converter picks the largest of those that fits inside your image and letterboxes the picture into it. 1920 × 1080 fits 704 × 576 but not 1408 × 1152 (its height is under 1152), so 4CIF is the result. In our testing the same PNG left at the default H.264 codec stayed at 1920 × 1080, while H.263 produced a 704 × 576 clip with white bars above and below the picture.

Which video codec does the output actually use by default?

H.264. The page offers H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 and Xvid, and H.264 is preselected. RFC 4393 lists H.263, H.264 and MPEG-4 as the video codecs a 3GPP2 file may carry, so all three UI choices produce a conforming file — Xvid is simply another MPEG-4 Part 2 encoder and lands in the container tagged mp4v exactly like the MPEG-4 choice.

What happened to the transparent parts of my PNG?

They were filled with the Background Color, white unless you changed it. Video formats have no alpha channel, so there is no "keep transparent" option to enable here — the flatten happens at full source resolution before any scaling, which keeps the edges clean instead of leaving a halo. If transparency is the point of the image, keep the PNG or convert to an alpha-capable image format instead.

Is 3G2 the same thing as 3GP?

They are siblings, not synonyms. 3GP came from 3GPP for GSM/UMTS handsets; 3G2 came from 3GPP2 for CDMA2000 handsets. They share the ISO base media structure and the same video codec list, and differ mainly on audio, where 3G2 adds the CDMA speech codecs (EVRC, QCELP/13K, SMV). Because a converted PNG has no audio at all, the practical difference here is only which device family expects the extension.

Can I stitch several PNGs into one 3G2 slideshow?

Yes. Upload them all and leave "Merge strategy" on "Merge images" — each file becomes one segment held for the Image Duration you chose, and they are concatenated into a single clip. Pick "Video per image" instead and you get one 3G2 per input. Frames of different sizes are fitted and padded with the Background Color so the clip keeps one consistent frame size.

What if I upload an animated PNG instead of a still?

An APNG is detected as animated and keeps its own frame timing, so the "Image Duration" setting is ignored for it and the resulting clip runs for the animation's real length. That is deliberate: forcing a fixed duration on a file that already has per-frame delays would either truncate it or freeze it. For a plain static PNG the Duration setting applies normally.

Why is the output larger or blurrier than the PNG I started with?

Because the still is re-encoded once per second for the whole duration, and H.263 or MPEG-4 Part 2 handle fine detail and text far less gracefully than a modern codec. Shorten the Duration, drop the resolution to something the target device can actually display, or switch to H.264. If the destination is anything but a legacy handset, PNG to MP4 gives a smaller and sharper file for the same clip.

What happens to my file after the conversion finishes?

It is uploaded over an encrypted connection, converted on our servers, and both the upload and the result are deleted automatically after a few hours. There is no sign-up, no watermark, and nothing is shared or made public.