IOS app Live Photos

Hi, Immich github Page says that Live Photos are supported through web and iOS app. And yes, on the webpage both upload (photo + video) and playback work, but on the mobile app upload doesn’t seem to work. Maybe I do something wrong, but I understand that Live Photos upload using mobile app means just selecting album in backup tab. Thanks in advance for any support.
16 Replies
Alex Tran
Alex Tran3y ago
When did you perform the upload? I just test it and it seems to work fine, you don't see the photo shown as LivePhoto on the web?
Fox Paradox
Fox ParadoxOP3y ago
Oh, great. I uploaded few Live Photos yesterday, and they still don’t work as live (maybe because they were downloaded by the iPhone form Photos cloud?). Anyways I took them ~2 weeks ago, now when I uploaded one just taken Live Photo it worked, and it shows as a live I dont see them as live neither in web nor app
Alex Tran
Alex Tran3y ago
Hm then I am not sure , the problem might be as you said, from download the photos from iCloud
Fox Paradox
Fox ParadoxOP3y ago
It may be, what’s important is that just taken ones works, thanks
neks
neks3y ago
I'm having this issue too. Photos that were uploaded to iCloud and not on the device did not get backed up into Immich. I downloaded some of the live photos back to my library using Photosync and it did get backed up as live photos. So it seems like only live photos on the device will get backed up to Immich. Is that correct @Alex? Using iOS 16.4 with Immich 1.51.1 and Immich iOS 1.51.0 b89 Just to clarify, the photos gets uploaded but the video portion does not when it's on iCloud. Thanks!
JimJam
JimJam3y ago
I would like to report that I’m having the same problem as @neks in version 1.53.0 (server and app) on iOS 16.4.1
Alex Tran
Alex Tran3y ago
This is a known limitation that assets will need to by present physically on the device to get backup to Immich
JimJam
JimJam3y ago
Is it in the pipeline to be fixed or is it a limitation that can’t be fixed? I’m sure when Live Photos was first introduced this wasn’t a problem (I could maybe be misremembering, but I don’t think so)
Alex Tran
Alex Tran3y ago
It would work fine if you download the asset from iCloud to your device. Maybe we have a misunderstanding here. What problem described by @neks was photos that aren’t on the device don’t get backup to Immich and this is expected Maybe you can elaborate more on your issue
JimJam
JimJam3y ago
Sorry, posted something and after further troubleshooting I think there's something else at play here. I've found that even a photo I took yesterday has a problem with the Live Photos not playing. It recognises it is a Live Photo, but gives me a red exclamation mark when I hover over the icon in the web. I'm going to wipe my install as I only set it fresh a few days ago and do some further testing. I'll let you know if I find anything useful.
Alex Tran
Alex Tran3y ago
So it might be related to transcoding, which browser are you playing some encoding cannot be played on Safari or FireFox
JimJam
JimJam3y ago
Yes, looks like it, I use Firefox. Just tried in Edge and the ones that weren't working do work there, although the preview looks noticeably different quality which would indicate transcoding as you say. I wonder why Immich has decided to transcode some Live Photos and not others? As in this case, ones that are working were only taken a few hours away from the transcoded ones and were uploaded overnight at the same time. But this is definitely getting off-topic for here, so will stop asking questions. Thanks for the help. 😄
Alex Tran
Alex Tran3y ago
We transcode all MOV videos because they cannot be played on the web but the encoding setting can be improved of course so that Firefox can accept it as well
JimJam
JimJam3y ago
I see what you're saying now! I had it the wrong way round sorry, I thought the ones that weren't working were the transcoded ones, but it's the opposite! I've clicked "missing" in the Transcode Videos job and it's picked up a bunch it missed. I didn't realise as it said 0 waiting till I clicked that. That's fixed it, it's working perfectly now in Firefox. Thanks again. 😇
Alex Tran
Alex Tran3y ago
AH I see thank you for reporting
JimJam
JimJam3y ago
@Alex sorry to be a pain and have derailed this with the transcoding stuff, but the original reported issue here and in particular this comment I'm replying to is still actually a problem. The majority of my photos are in the cloud as my phone can't store them all. Immich is correctly pulling the photos down from iCloud whilst backing up, but it's not sending the .mov file. I have just spent some time testing this. Any photo that I haven't interacted with (so is not downloaded to device) that I put in a "Test" album that Immich is set to upload from, only uploads the .HEIC or .JPG, but not the .MOV. If I interact with the photo on my phone so that it downloads everything to the device, it does send both the .HEIC or .JPG and the .MOV file. To add to that, if I then interact with one of the images that didn't upload the .MOV so that it is fully downloaded locally, then delete it from Immich (but not Apple Photos), then try to re-upload it, it still only sends the .HEIC or .JPG, not the .MOV.

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