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Apple's Live Photos Take Up About 2x Space of Normal Images

Friday September 11, 2015 12:17 am PDT by Arnold Kim
One of the novel new features coming in the iPhone 6s is the new Live Photos feature which captures an additional 3 seconds of video surrounding photos on the new iPhones. The new feature is on by default and allows you to take photos as usual. Apple describes it:
A still photo captures an instant frozen in time. With Live Photos, you can turn those instants into unforgettable living memories. At the heart of a Live Photo is a beautiful 12‑megapixel photo. But together with that photo are the moments just before and after it was taken, captured with movement and sound
Live Photos will be viewable on existing iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple Watch devices with the latest operating systems. Apple is also opening up the API for developers to support the new format in their own apps. Facebook has already committed to supporting Live Photos in their iOS app later this year.


While few details about the new image format has been released, TechCrunch's Matthew Panzarino reveals in a video that the new format will take up approximate twice the space of a normal 12MP photo. Panzarino describes that even the current iPhones start taking photos the moment the Camera app is launched, and that traditionally, only the last photo the moment the shutter is pressed is stored. The new system will simply take the surrounding photos and compress them into this new format.

Meanwhile, @DanMatte reveals that the new Live Photos format is a bundle of images based on the JPEG file format, allowing them to be easily sent as a still image to devices that don't support Live Photo. Apple's developer documents indicate that you can share the image as a regular JPEG if desired.

More details should come out as the new iPhones begin shipping on September 25th.

Tag: Live Photos
[ 392 comments ]


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lordofthereef
50 months ago
Another reason why 16gb entry level is so damn painful
Rating: 95 Votes
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soupcan
50 months ago
16GB lol.

Apple please. There has to be at least one sane person who thought "we can't ship 16GB phones" inside those walls, right? RIGHT?
Rating: 49 Votes
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JamesPDX
50 months ago
I like this. Very Harry Potter-ish.
Rating: 44 Votes
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btrach144
50 months ago
Apple just keeps milking their followers. 16GB entry storage and yet they've added Live Photos and 4k video recording? Sigh. At least I plan to go for the 128GB but I feel bad for those on a budget or who don't know what 16GB really means.
Rating: 33 Votes
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cariacou
50 months ago
so that's why they stuck with 16gb
Rating: 31 Votes
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vmistery
50 months ago
To be honest I was expecting them to take up a lot more space than double.
Rating: 18 Votes
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hagar
50 months ago
Why do people refer to iCloud as the solution for lack of space on 16GB phone? It's not: iCloud just makes a copy of your files in the cloud. But they're still on the phone a well.

In the new Photos app you do have the option to Optimize Storage but that only goes so far. My iCloud Photo library has 15.000+ photos on it and I cannot enable iCloud Photos on my current 16GB iPhone and iPad because there's not enough room on them. What happens is that 80% of the thumbnails remain white squares and when clicking on them I get an error message stating the photo cannot be downloaded from iCloud. Also, my phone fills up until less than 300MB is available and then I get all sorts of other error messages.

It's just a horrible user experience: I pay for the devices, I pay for iCloud storage, but still nothing works as expected. Very disappointing. The only solution: spend more money and buy bigger iOS devices.
Rating: 16 Votes
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John Mcgregor
50 months ago

Moron alert. When you stitch images together they aren't videos. Is a gif a video? No. You can't read so I'll spell it out again, unless you're calling PHIL Shiller a liar, " They're NOT videos". It's a new format. Geez, grow a brain will ya.


video |ˈvɪdɪəʊ| noun (pl.videos) 1 [ mass noun ] the recording, reproducing, or broadcasting of moving visual images. it's a great option for anyone looking to start using video to talk over the Net. [ as modifier ] : video equipment.2 a recording of moving visual images made digitally or on videotape. she could post videos of the event on the Internet. they sat down to watch a video. [ as modifier ] : a site on which people can post their own video clips.• a short film made by a pop or rock group to accompany a song. a pop video.• Brit. a video recorder. he set the video.• a video cassette: a blank video | [ as modifier ] : a video library | [ mass noun ] : the film will soon be released on video.


Video is an image sequence. Shoot 24 images per second and you'll get a movement. Of course since then it evolved into digital and all kinds of compressions and formats, but basics never changed.

So before and after live photo is effectively a video.
Rating: 14 Votes
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keysofanxiety
50 months ago

Apple makes 92% profit of the entire smartphone industry for a reason.


Yep, very true. It's just a little frustrating when you consider all that BS rhetoric they give about 'making the best products in the world' and 'we only think about the user experience', and 'we don't ship junk/profits aren't important'. It's all rubbish.
Rating: 14 Votes
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Jsameds
50 months ago
Due to the decreased size of iOS 9, smaller app sizes and also methods such as automatic app deletion/reinstallation for updates mean that 16GB this year actually is much more than last year's 16GB.

If 16GB isn't enough just get 64GB. It's not complicated...
Rating: 10 Votes

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