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[glynor]

WHAT:
I'd like it if MC handled Live Photos. I think you have almost all of the pieces there to do so, but it needs some serious help.

HOW:
I think MC should:
* Detect Live Photos which have a matching move/image "pair" on import and auto-stack them with the Image on top.
* Have a new Live Photo [Media Sub Type] they get assigned to by Carnac on import.
* Automatically handle moving them as a set when renamed via RMCF.
* Play the live photo on mouseover when browsing them in MC, but otherwise hide them from normal view (easy because they're stacked).
* Play the live photo on playback in Playing Now (Display View, etc) when activated somehow.
* Probably have a Options > Features checkbox to turn all of this off because there's bound to be someone it'll annoy.

Carnac should be able to handle the first two things. It is difficult to do after the fact in filters and expressions because you have to look for a matching image filename in the same path, but Carnac could do this easily. The RMCF bit would be new, but doesn't seem like that big of a challenge considering the handling of subtitle files, cover artwork, and other sidecars.

Granted, the playback while browsing part would be new, but you already animate the browser view for Playlists and "album stacks" when hoovering the mouse, and it doesn't seem impossible that you could do the same for Live Photos using the video sidecar. In Playing Now, you'd need some non-hoovering way to activate them, I think. I'd recommend via a single left-click (which doesn't currently do anything super useful now I think and would be an intuitive, discoverable action). But it could even be a right-click > Play Live Photo command, if not buried in the context menu.

I could even live without the playback parts, but I really need the first three. The last bit you can ignore if you're brave.

WHY:
In my other thread, Marko brought up something about MC's handling of importing Home Movie filenames, and it made realize that I didn't remember this particular annoyance because I've largely abandoned using MC for viewing and handling my home photos library. And that, in no small part, is due to the fact that MC really barfs up its lung with Live Photos.

I use Live Photos a lot. And even if I didn't that much, my wife certainly does (it is basically always turned on). I like them. They're often useless or silly, but they're occasionally brilliant and really make the photos come alive. And you can use them to do cool effects like the motion blur stuff too. And, in any case, my drives are all giant and they are small so what's the harm in having them on when you might like some of them?

But importing my photos into MC now becomes a jumbled mess of thousands upon thousands of tiny little "home video" clips. Worse, RMCF will break them (even for use in other applications) if you use MC to move your photo files around because the movies have to be treated like "sidecars" to the photos for them to stay connected. RMCF will move them "independently" unless you're very careful and break them totally.

To be honest, that's not my only problem with MC's photo library handling, but that would be a whole different thread. In the very least, I'd love to be able to use MC to browse my photo library and do playback of them for "enjoyment" (on the TV).

But I find I don't even do that anymore, and that's mainly because it barfs all over the Live Photos. I've crafted some rules so that they're mostly auto-detected and hidden, but... My rules aren't flawless by any means (you can't really detect live photos part of a matching pair in the same path, only "typical characteristics" of them). And even if you could, that is really just quite-literally hiding the issue. I can't use them as Live Photos in MC, and I can't use MC to organize the files on disk without breaking them.

[JimH]

https://developer.apple.com/live-photos/

[glynor]

https://developer.apple.com/live-photos/

FYI, Jim (et all): The Apple Dev tools would only really be needed if you want to use the Apple APIs on the Mac version (or iOS) to do things with (edit them, share them through iCloud, etc) the Live Photos.

For the stuff I mentioned, no fanciness is needed.

Live Photos are literally just "matched sets" of a still image file (JPG or HEIC) and a short video file (MOV, with a particular resolution and maximum duration) with the same filenames, sans extension, in the same directory. That's it. There is no special "file format" to read or anything. You just play the video when you want to play the video, and play the still when you want to play the still. The rest would all be handling within MC.

[glynor]

I was also thinking as I drifted off to sleep last night, that... If you built the feature nicely, the same "stuff" could be used for other potential cool features down the road. For example, perhaps, Movie Trailers. If Carnac could automatically detect trailer (or "sample") sidecar video files, you could handle those in almost the same exact way.

(And then, if you get really fancy, Auto Metadata Lookup could download the trailers in the background.)

[glynor]

If you need sample files to play with and don't have an iPhone at all to use, I'd be happy to provide. But, of course, all iPhones have had the feature for years and years now, so even if you have an old one, you can probably make your own.