Live Photos format: .JPG mixed with 960x720 .MOV at 12-15 fps --- Now HEIC image + 1080p HEVC h.265

[Ns1]

The video is limited to 256 colors? It's really not like a gif, I don't understand why you're so intent on this.

to 99% of end users, it's just like a gif. I don't understand why you're so intent rehashing the technical differences because I don't give a fuck.

slashbinslashbash said it way more eloquently:

Your pedantry over this is kind of like an IT guy telling a user "You're not saving it to the hard drive! You've got an SSD, not a hard drive!" as if the user really cares about the technical implementation underlying the abstraction that he thinks of as a "hard drive". The Internet as a whole has abstracted ".GIF" and most people have no idea, nor do they care, about the underlying implementation. It's just a short, looping, animated picture. That's a .GIF to 90% of the world.

 

[Tegeril]

ehhhh. If you don't care...

 

[Ns1]

I found out that only iCloud Photo Storage and Google Photos support true Live Photos backup. I now store all my photos w/ Google ^_^

 

[Rakehellion]

I found out that only iCloud Photo Storage and Google Photos support true Live Photos backup. I now store all my photos w/ Google ^_^

Mac OS doesn't even support it yet.

 

[Eug]

When did the specs of Live Photos change? I was looking at some of the Live Photos from my iPhone 7 Plus and they looked way better than before.

I just exported one of them and the video is 1308 x 980p at 29.97 fps, although it also gets listed as 1440 x 1080p.

Running iOS 10.3 beta.

 

[Eug]

I'm looking through some of the older photos, and on my 7 Plus the photos are below 1440x1080, but they aren't consistently the same resolution. I have checked some of our iPhone 6s photos, and they are 1440x1080 exactly. Could this have something to do with image stabilization?

As for the frame rate, it varies. However, it seems to be limited to 15 fps in 10.1, but in 10.2 I'm seeing all sorts of numbers often above 15 fps, to as high as 29.97 fps. Perhaps this has to do with the amount of light present.

So, the Live Photos resolution is now 1080p even in 10.1 as we knew, but the frame rate is as high as 29.97 fps now at least if you're running 10.2 or later. Nice. This is what I wanted. I'm happy with this. 720p at 15 fps when I started this thread just didn't cut it.

---

Summary and comments:

Rakehellion confirms that 1440x1080 support was present as early as 2015. So it looks like it didn't require iOS 10. However, in iOS 10.x I am seeing them all at 1440x1080.

Before 10.2, the Live Photos I tried maxed out at 15 fps, and some were below 10 fps. But as of 10.2 and now in 10.3 beta, I am seeing as high as 29.97 fps.

1440x1080 at 20ish to 29.97 fps looks very good. MUCH better than 960x720p at 9-15 fps.

 

[Eug]

I just loaded up iOS 11 beta on my iPhone 7 Plus, and with Live Photos I get 1440x1080 h.265 HEVC at 20+ fps, paired with a HEIC image file. The image sizes are decent. Think JPEG size now for a combo HEIC image + HEVC video file. However, aside from within iOS 11 itself, right now I have no way of displaying the HEIC image. I don't have High Sierra installed on any of my Macs yet.

Also, 4K recording is 2160p30 h.265 HEVC. These files play smoothly on the iPhone 7 Plus of course, but are not really playable on the iPad Air 2. The 1080p HEVC in Live Photos should work, but don't expect to be able play back 4K video on an iPad Air 2, even though the 4K video from an iPhone should be comparatively easy as far 4K video goes. Unfortunately, the iPad Air 2 misses the cutoff for hardware HEVC decode.

 

[Ns1]

<3 LivePhotos

 

[Eug]

Heh, from my original post in 2015:

The videos are 4:3 960x720, which is a little bit disappointing actually. We had heard comments that they were based on JPG, which obviously they aren't (which makes sense given the limited storage used). I guess the Live Photos are JPG, but the actual videos are not. I still don't know the actual video format, but assuming they're just H.264 I would have hoped for say 4:3 1440x1080. Actually, I'd prefer H.265 1440x1080, but that would cause problems with older iOS 9 compatible devices.

So finally Apple did come through... after two more new OS releases two years later. Well, actually the 1440x1080 came last year IIRC, but with h.264.

I guess they needed 2 other main things for HEVC in Live Photos, besides OS support:

1) iPhone 7 series phones, to be able to encode in real-time HD h.265 HEVC. I had originally presumed that both the A8 and A9 iDevices would have this, but they don't. However, I wonder if they actually do but just that it's not activated. We know that older iDevices have h.265 support for FaceTime, so the hardware is likely there, but they chose not to activate it at this time on all those legacy devices, either because of licencing costs or because of marketing choices (or both). Regarding marketing choices, it's now a product differentiator for the iPhone 7 series and the upcoming 7s / 8 series, vs. the older models.

2) Skylake Macs, to be able to play back these 8-bit HEVC files in hardware. (See my previous post.)

Neither the iPhone 7 / 7 Plus or the Skylake MacBook Pros came out until the second half of 2016 long after the iOS 10 betas were out, so the timing just wasn't right. Now that they're already out, everything is falling into place. Actually, the Skylake iMacs were already out in 2015 and the Skylake MacBooks were out in April 2016, but that wasn't good enough because the higher dollar MacBook Pros and iMacs didn't have Skylake yet.

A nice bonus is that they have since released Kaby Lake Macs as well, and not only do they support the 8-bit HEVC hardware playback in High Sierra, they also add 10-bit HEVC hardware playback, as well as hardware 8-bit HEVC encoding. I now have both a Kaby Lake MacBook and a Kaby Lake iMac in my possession, and I am anxiously awaiting the public beta of High Sierra.

This also makes me wonder if the iPhone 8s will add 10-bit hardware encoding for HEVC, both for 4K video and for Live Photos, or at least for 4K video. This would be supported in iOS 12, and the hardware decoding would only be available to Kaby Lake Macs and later (Coffee Lake and Cannonlake).