iPhone 13 mini video audio codecs randomly change

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iPhone 13 mini video audio codecs randomly change

I'm on iPhone 13 mini. I was having issues playing back some of my videos through a third-party app. Upon further analysis, it turns out some of my videos have audio encoded in AAC format, and some in LPCM. The audio codecs change seemingly randomly, and I found a case where two videos, taken 10 minutes from each other, have audio encoded in different formats.

I would like to know why this behavior occurs, and if it is possible to fix the codec to one or the other.

Thanks.

iPhone 13 mini, iOS 18

Posted on Nov 17, 2025 4:22 AM

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Answer 1

Nov 17, 2025 10:12 AM in response to sukovicm

FWIW at least ProRes movies use PCM audio so maybe those movies were shot using that option:

General
Writing operating system                 : Apple iOS 26.1
Writing hardware                         : Apple iPhone 16 Pro

Video
Format                                   : ProRes
Format profile                           : 422 HQ
Chroma subsampling                       : 4:2:2

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Little / Signed
Codec ID                                 : lpcm
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Bit depth                                : 32 bits

Audio #2
Format                                   : PCM
Format settings                          : Signed
Codec ID                                 : lpcm
Channel(s)                               : 4 channels
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 32 bits

[snip]

If you want to convert to a more compressed audio you can use 3rd party apps like ffmpeg, Shutter Encoder, Handbrake etc to losslessly copy video and convert audio to AAC and wrap them as .mp4 etc.

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