Duplicate live photos resulting from photostream

Question

Duplicate live photos resulting from photostream

I used Photo Stream in the past to sync new photos from my XS into the Photos app on macOS. I just learned live photos are synced as still images via the stream.

When I plug in my phone to my 2019 macbook (on Catalina of course), the live photos show as new photos to import. I have 5,000 new photos to import. I was concerned about duplicates, so I just imported a few photos, and sure enough, they are duplicated on Photos now.

I am assuming this is happening because Photosteram just imports one frame of your live photo - which is of course a movie file - and since they are not truly duplicate files (i.e. one is a photo, the other is a movie, even though they have the same filename), Photos is not recognizing them as duplicates.

So I am wondering if anyone has dealt with this. I regret ever using photostream and wish I had looked more closely at Photos to catch this happening earlier!

Thank!

MacBook

Posted on Dec 19, 2019 8:54 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

202,045 points

Dec 19, 2019 10:29 AM in response to Jeff in the north

My Photo Stream is very limited. It cannot transfer any video.

The Live Photos are a pair of a video component (low resolution) and a high resolution still frame. My Photo Stream will only transfer the still frame, but not the video component. If you now import your Live Photos using a UsB connection, Photos should recognize the still frame as a duplicate and warn you not to import. The video component will be imported as a separate video and not paired with the still frame. You do not have duplicates - you have a dead Live Photo, split into a video and still frame, and you can no longer use the Live effects. To pair the still frame again with the video clip, I would do the following:

Export the video clip and the Live Photo with "File > Export > Export unmodified Original".
Disable My Photo Stream. It is causing trouble, if you are shooting Live Photos.
Copy the filename of the Live Photo to the Clipboard.
Delete the video clip and the still frame from your Photos Library. Empty Recently Deleted.
Make sure, that the exported video clip and the still image are having the same filename, only a different file bane extension, for example: IMG_2056.HEIC and IMG_2056.MOV. If not change the filenames to the original IMG_2056.
Now reimport the pair of files together. You should now be seeing them again as Live Photo with animation.

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Answer 2

Dec 19, 2019 8:19 PM in response to léonie

Thank you very much for the reply.

You commented ‘Photos should recognize the still frame as a duplicate and warn you not to import’.

Photos does not do this. It recognizes the live photo’s as a ‘new item’ to import.

When I import a Live Photo, it comes in as a heic file. The ‘dead’ image file is a jpg. My understanding is that Live Photo’s are in the heic format. Therefore it is the file I want to keep.

The two files have the same file name and other meta data so I was hoping there is a way to import all of the Live Photo’s and run a utility or something to remove identify and remove the duplicates.

I really appreciate the reply but I have 5000 of these to deal with and can’t go through each one individually.

thanks!!!

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

202,045 points

Dec 19, 2019 10:51 PM in response to Jeff in the north

Your iPhone will take the LIVE photos in the HEIC format, if the Settings > Camera are set to Formats > High Efficiency.

If you are seeing the duplicates in different formats - HEIC and JPEG, you have set the Settings on your iPhone to download the photos via USB as HEIC files and not to convert them to JPEG. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207022#working

This is managed in the Settings > Photos > Transfer to Mac. You must be using "Keep Originals" to prevent the conversion to JPEG.

My Photo Stream is transferring JPEGs instead of HEIC files. That is why the duplicate detection did not work and your Live Photos have been transferred alive. Thanks to the settings on your iPhone you have been lucky.

You can try to find all JPEG files with a smart album. Use a rule "Filename includes jpg" (or if your duplicates are having the filename extension .jpeg try "Filename includes jpeg".

You can restrict this with a date rule to the time you have been using my Photo Stream, like this:

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Duplicate live photos resulting from photostream

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