How to truly save Live photos on a PC

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How to truly save Live photos on a PC

I was wondering, I've been searching for a while and haven't found a true solution.

I'm after a workflow which allows me to to backup my Iphone XR's live photos onto my PC.

All solutions involve storing the preferred .jpg (at 3-4K resolution) and a movie of the remaining frames as .mov at 1.4K. This is the recommended workflow but it doesn't allow iterating and extracting another frame at a later date.

What I'm after is the ability to save the live photo with all the contained photos at full resolution, whether it's via a single HEIC or a set of stills extracted from the original, I don't mind.

I would be happy to pay for an app which allows this, if needed.

Any suggestion?

I'm on Windows7 with the copytrans HEIC viewer installed, if that matters and don't use cloud solutions.

Many thanks

Luca

iPhone XR, iOS 12

Posted on Mar 11, 2019 10:13 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

varignet Author

Level 1

44 points

Mar 11, 2019 12:43 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

Thanks for your message and for taking the time to write such a lengthy reply.

I think you’re mistaken on one point though: A live photo is not just an img plus a Quicktime, well at least not internally:

When exported, the QT has a substantially lower resolution than the key image. The key image is 4032x3024 whereas the QT is 1440x1080.

However when changing key image on the Iphone the resulting key image maintains full resolution, not the resolution inferred by the QT.

This would obviously be impossible had the Iphone stored the live photo as img plus lower resolution Quicktime combo.

It makes sense that internally live photos are stored a sequence of full resolution pictures and it seems that when copying the image plus quicktime via traditional methods some of the information is lost.

It would be logical for Apple to store live photos as HEIC files.

To recap I’m after a method to backup live photos in all their natural resolution onto a PC. Any ideas?

Many thanks

Luca

P.s.

Does it make sense or am I missing something obvious?

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Answer 2

Mar 11, 2019 11:03 AM in response to varignet

Apple introduced Live Photos feature with iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, and the feature is present in the latest iPhones as well. The Live Photos feature, as you know, is a mixture of movie and still image. That is, a Live Photo is neither a photo nor a video.

When you capture a Live Photo on your iPhone, the iOS creates a MOV file as well as a JPEG file.

If you’re running Windows 10, Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 and want to view Live Photos on your PC, you have a couple of options.

You need to either play the MOV video file using a media player, convert Live Photos to GIF images first on your iPhone and transfer them to your PC to view them, or transfer Live Photos to your PC and then covert to GIF to view Live Photos on your Windows 10 PC before viewing them.

For those who are wondering, a GIF image will look similar to a Live Photo but the clarity of the picture might not be as good as the original Live Photo.

View iPhone Live Photos on Windows 10 without additional software

As said before, iPhone creates a MOV file as well as a JPEG image when you capture a Live Photo. The easiest way to view your Live Photos on your Windows 10 PC is to transfer these MOV files (connect your iPhone to PC > open File Explorer > iPhone > Internet storage > DCIM) to your PC and then double-click on a video file to play it using the default Films & TV app. We recommend use a video player that automatically plays all the videos in a folder (GOM player does this best) to quickly play all MOV files.

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Answer 3

Mar 11, 2019 11:13 AM in response to SravanKrA

Wow, you are good!

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How to truly save Live photos on a PC

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