How to Make a Video a Live Photo
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Loading... - Khalil Brahimi
- 04 Aug 2022
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A Live Photo can be made from a video, but this isn’t a built-in capability of the iPhone. Instead, a third-party app is required. Alternatively, an iPhone can capture a Live Photo if the camera app is set up to do so. The iPhone’s default setting of Live Auto, however, leaves the decision to an Apple algorithm that might choose to snap a still photo instead. Thankfully, this setting can be adjusted to force Live Photo to be recorded every time if preferred.
Live Photo is a very useful feature, not only for capturing motion but also for refining a photograph after it’s already been taken. This means that it’s worth taking a little time to understand how it works and its various uses.
In this guide, we will walk through how to convert a video into a Live Photo and vice versa.
How to Convert a Video into a Live Photo
Apple doesn’t include an app or any other method of converting a video into a Live Photo but this is possible with a third-party app. The popular and free intoLive app serves this purpose well and can even create a Live Photo that is longer than the standard 3 seconds. The app is ad-supported, however, the current one advertisement per save tradeoff seems fair. For a few dollars, a one-time purchase enables Pro options and removes the ads.
To use intoLive to convert a video into a Live Photo, the user should open the app and browse their library to find the video to be converted.
After opening a video, the filmstrip below the main video view can be dragged side to side to select the portion of the video to use, and handles at either end allow trimming to make a shorter Live Photo. Pinching allows zooming and dragging. Various effects are possible and appear at the bottom of the screen, including speed adjustments and filters, as well as adjusting the Key Photo. The video can also be edited in advance with any other app.
When happy with the video, tapping the Make button in the upper-right will bring up options for a repeating loop. The free version only has one choice, No repeat, but the Pro version can repeat up to 10 times.
After choosing the repetition amount, a button appears to Save Live Photo, and tapping this will save the Live Photo to the photo library.
What is a Live Photo?
When a Live Photo is viewed on an iPhone or iPad with a finger held to the screen, a short video will play of that moment along with the accompanying sound. It’s as if the image comes to life with just a touch.
Apple created the Live Photo format in 2015, a fun addition to iOS 9 that helped to demonstrate the big performance gains made with the Apple A9 processor in the iPhone 6S. Having been around for several years, most iPhone users are familiar with this feature and the Google camera in Android phones has something similar called Motion Photo.
The iPhone records video continuously to a temporary memory buffer while the camera app is open in Photo mode if Live Photo is enabled. It only saves, however, when the shutter button is tapped. A particularly interesting detail is that the iPhone saves 1.5 seconds of video from before the picture was taken and 1.5 seconds of what happens after. This is easily verified by waving a hand past the iPhone’s camera and tapping the shutter, but only after the hand has passed. Pressing and holding this Live Photo will show the hand traveling by, even though the photo was seemingly taken too late.
A Live Photo shows a still that’s exactly in the middle, timewise, within the recorded video. It is possible to change the Key Photo, the still image that’s shown when not touching the screen, and sometimes a better moment or a frame with less motion blur can be found by checking the captured frames one at a time. This is quite easy to do on the iPhone.
How to Take a Live Photo with an iPhone
Apple has the Live Photo feature set to Auto by default in the iPhone. In this mode, a photo might or might not be recorded with the 3-second video snippet that’s needed to make it into a Live Photo, depending on how much movement is detected in the view and other factors, such as lighting and whether Night Mode is required for the picture. Unfortunately, Apple doesn’t share specific details about the algorithm used. The setting can easily be changed in the iPhone camera app to ensure that a Live Photo is always captured or that only a single still is captured. Read More...
