Videos get compressed when moving from Photos to Files app (iPad)

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Videos get compressed when moving from Photos to Files app (iPad)

I’ve noticed that videos from my camera (4k30, at 100Mbps) end up taking roughly a quarter of original storage when I drag them from Photos to the Files app. (For example a 65MB video ends up being 14MB, with a significant loss of quality and compression artifacts).

This compressed size is the same in these 3 cases:

a) Moving the video (drag and drop, or share menu) from Photos to Files

b) opening the video in iMovie and exporting it to Files app

c) *sending the video via AirDrop

*although with AirDrop, there is a setting to share “All photos data” - with that selected, the 65MB video ends up being 65MB on the device I send it to.

Is there a way to move these videos to Files app without the compression (“All photos data” does’t help here)?

iPad Pro, iPadOS 16

Posted on Mar 26, 2023 9:40 AM

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Answer 1

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sberman

Level 10

271,636 points

Mar 27, 2023 1:02 PM in response to Pap4ja

I just used a different method to move videos from Photos to Files with no compression!

Here’s what I did:

Opened the video in Photos
Tapped the box with the up arrow (circled below)
Chose “Save to Files” from the resulting drop-down.

I did update to iPadOS 16.4, which I know is a later version than you were using.

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Answer 2

Pap4ja Author

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9 points

Mar 29, 2023 11:25 AM in response to sberman

Still same on 16.4. Maybe it’s how iCloud treats different video formats that’s causing that?

a) HEVC iPhone videos (been on cloud and locally on iPad for some time) - no issues when moving to the Files using your method

b) H.264 iPhone videos - it seems to work too, but I’ve only tested it on iPhone right after recording these (I’ve always recorded in HEVC)

c) H.264 from my camera (on cloud and iPad for some time) - they still get compressed when moving to Files. There’s also one more difference here - iPhone videos can be moved to Files straight away, but videos from my camera go through a “Preparing…” loading screen before being ready to save them to Files.

*also, my camera = my Lumix camera, I notice I may have not been clear enough that it’s from a dedicated camera

But I’ve also found a workaround for that - I can download these H.264 Lumix videos from icloud.com and they do get saved in full resolution.

I’ve found this older post, I think it was a similar problem (but with iPhone H.264 videos in that case) Automatic conversion to HEVC in iCloud Ph… - Apple Community

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Answer 3

Pap4ja Author

Level 1

9 points

Mar 27, 2023 6:58 AM in response to sberman

Sorry, a misunderstanding on my part, I thought I’ll need a Mac or PC to do that…

I’ve tried moving the videos with the “Keep originals” selected this time, but the they still get compressed.

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Answer 4

Pap4ja Author

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9 points

Mar 26, 2023 2:28 PM in response to sberman

I wanted to do that straight from iPad since that has been my main computer for some time now. It’s not really urgent to me and I’m also planning to get a Mac soon, which will hopefully make stuff like this easier. It’s just a pity there doesn’t seem to be a way to move these files losslessly on iPadOS.

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