MMS Compiler

The Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is an evolution of the SMS. It supports text with multimedia images, slide show, sound and video. The visual content displays and plays within the recipients messaging application.

MMS is supported in most mobiles manufactured since the end of 2001, including feature phones and smartphones: Android, Symbian, Blackberry, Windows Phone, among others. Apple supports MMS since iOS 3, but SMIL formatting is ignored. Apple uses predefined formatting templates to manage the layout and transitions of the MMS contents instead of the SMIL formatting attached to the MMS file. Some devices support combining MMS with HTML markup.

The MMS technical specifications were originally created by the WAP Forum and 3GPP. Currently, the specifications are maintained by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). SMIL is the language used to configure how the MMS is displayed. SMIL for MMS is like HTML for a web page. Most MMS-capable applications support a subset of SMIL 2.0. More recent SMIL versions are not widely supported in the MMS world.

The MMS Compiler is an open-source tool which can be used to generate Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) files based on a predefined set of input files: text, images, audio, video. This tool can be used in Windows or Linux (x86). It doesn't require any additional dependencies or components.

Please, check the Overview and User's Guide for more details and practical recommendations on how to compile MMS files for compatibility with different mobiles.

When publishing an MMS file to a webserver, the following conditions should be met:

The URL must be accessible through the MMS APN configured in the mobile. If it is blocked by the operator, a temporary workaround is to configure the Internet APN as the MMS APN to let the mobile download MMS files from any public website. This workaround should be used for testing only, as it might be unsafe to download and reproduce MMS files from any website.
The MIME type for the MMS file must be application/vnd.wap.mms-message
Some MMS clients don't support HTTP redirects. Therefore, don't use URL shorteners or similar tools.
Older MMS clients don't support SSL/TLS. Therefore, the URL should use plain HTTP, not HTTPS.

Most handsets don't display any error if the MMS download fails. Therefore, it might be necessary to use a debugger (e.g. adb for Android) to see the exact error messages.