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Hey lpt 5108 and Enrique Rodriguez,

I just had virtually this same issue. I was trying to transfer a 1080p .mp4 video from my Windows 7 computer to my iPhone 5 and every attempt resulted in the "ERROR "Write Failed":Asset may not be compatible with this device" message.

10 minutes prior to attempting the aforementioned transfer, I successfully transferred a 720p .mp4 video using the same method (computer > iPhone). So when the 1080p transfer failed, I compared the two files' codec and they were the same. I concluded that the problem may be that Photo Transfer App does not support the transfer of 1080p video files at all, or if it does, they must be in a .mov or .m4v format.

It seemed absurd to me that Photo Transfer App doesn't support the transfer of 1080p video files, so I found these community forums and searched for the "Write failed" error, and found your post. I read Enrique Rodriguez' last reply, which mentioned that this issue may be related to having spaces in the file name.

His suggestion seemed very plausible to me so I immediately renamed the video file on my computer from "The Script - Hall of Fame ft. will.i.am.mp4" to "The_Script_Hall_of_Fame_ft._will.i.am.mp4". (I replaced all spaces with underscores). I anxiously attempted the transfer again and IT WORKED PERFECTLY!

Here are all the steps I took to resolve the "ERROR "Write Failed":Asset may not be compatible with this device" error:

*NOTE:* I was using a Windows 7 computer to transfer a 1080p .mp4 video file to an iPhone 5, using the Web Browser transfer method.


  1. Replace ALL spaces in the file name of the video you wish to transfer with underscores. *1

  2. Close the web browser on your computer

  3. Force-close all apps on your iPhone. *2

  4. Hard-reboot your iPhone

  5. Launch the Photos app

  6. Close the Photos app

  7. Follow the rest of the instructions to "TRANSFER Photos & Videos FROM your Windows Computer to your iPhone or iPod touch", beginning at Step 3



1 - You can probably replace the spaces with characters besides underscores. I used underscores because they most closely resemble spaces.

2 - It's most likely not necessary to force-quit all the running applications. I just like to be extremely thorough...I'm a software developer and do a LOT of debugging, so being thorough and documenting problems and solutions is second nature to me :)