Preserving Live Photos stored other than iPhone

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Level 1

9 points

Preserving Live Photos stored other than iPhone

I like the Live Photos I take & to save iPhone space I'd like to dump old life photos into some larger cloud based storage. I've tried Dropbox, OneDrive, Flickr and even unbelievably Apples own "files" app doesn't preserve "Live Photos" format. How can such a big camera feature be lost doing such a normal everyday thing like using alternative mass storage? Even Apple's own?

ps. Google photos seems about the nearest you can get to preserving the format but even google convert it to a video which doesn't download back to a "Live Photo" on your device in the future if you wish to recover it to your iPhone. Is there a fix?

Greg

iPhone 11 Pro Max, iOS 13

Posted on May 19, 2020 5:17 AM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,729 points

May 19, 2020 5:51 AM in response to gregwold

When you download the photos from your iPhone to a computer, using a USB connection, two or three files will be saved: a high resolution still image (a HEIC file), a video clip with the animation (a .MOV file), an optional .AA file with the effects. You have to keep the all three files together to be able to recreate a Live Photo. when I import the parts of the Live photo together into a Photos Library on my mac, they will be reassembled as a Live Photo, but it will only work, as long a the video clip or the still frame have not already imported as a single item. Then the duplicate detection will prevent the recreation of the Live Photo. i have not tried to save the Live Photos on iCloud Drive, but you will always have to save all components of the Live Photo together and reimport them together.

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Answer 2

gregwold Author

Level 1

9 points

May 19, 2020 7:13 AM in response to léonie

Hello, thank you that's really helpful to know, it doesn't quite apply to my circumstances because I really want to save these Live Photos to some sort of cloud based storage whilst preserving the live photo element. You would think Apple's own drive called 'files' would cater for their own file formats but it appears not to. If I simply press on any live Photo in my camera roll on my iPhone and choose the option to send to 'files'. Not separating anything just simply sending the photo to 'files', then delete the photo from my camera roll, then go back into 'files' and restore the photo back to my camera roll, it's no longer a live photo. Anyone got an answer to this or know of any other cloud storage that preserves the live photo element? I don't trust myself not to lose a USB memory stick so I only really want to save to some sort of cloud

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Preserving Live Photos stored other than iPhone

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