Living Images show as still images

[Kimmo Toivanen]

Before reverting Lumia 640 back to WP8.1 and Lumia Camera, I was being bugged by Windows Camera Living Images (shortly LI). It seemed that camera took just still images. I don't like a camera I can't trust.

Today I took some LI with 8.1. Lumia Camera is faithful to the setting and takes video clip every time. But how to view them on W10 PC? No way. So I opened one succesfull W10M LI (visible in W10 PC and phone) in order to duplicate the structure with 8.1 LI files, but the container is more than just simple zip, maybe a JPG with zip content added into it.

Then I noticed that failed W10M LIs from last Saturday (nice christmas lights in a shopping center with "dropping" lights) also had correct LI naming and they were the right size (around 3.5-4MB when still image is <2MB). I unzipped content and - living.jpg and living.mp4 were there. One image can be found at onedrive for those who are interested.
I have also some other pictures with LI naming but the size is too small and no zip content in them.

How is it possible that LI images are created by the camera but neither phone nor PC are capable to show them? Have others had similar problems?

Bonus: Is there a way to create W10-supported LI from WP8.1 LI files? App or batch file? Creating zip file and appending it to jpeg file does not seem to work...

 

[gpobernardo]

Today I took some LI with 8.1. Lumia Camera is faithful to the setting and takes video clip every time. But how to view them on W10 PC? No way.

Look for and copy the files that end in ".mp4.thm", then delete the ".thm" extension. You should be able to watch the resulting ".mp4" in a video player.

 

[Kimmo Toivanen]

Look for and copy the files that end in ".mp4.thm", then delete the ".thm" extension. You should be able to watch the resulting ".mp4" in a video player.

That is true, but how to merge jpeg, mp4 and thumbnail to a single jpeg file so that it can be viewed in W10 photos app like live images captured in W10M?

 

[gpobernardo]

Merge? I'm not sure that can be done, but the Windows 10 PC Photos app can view those living images taken in Windows Phone 8.1. I just did, so I'm not sure why you said there was no way to view them in Windows 10 PC.

 

[Kimmo Toivanen]

Here is my data:
Windows 10 Mobile live images: 30+ (based on name, file size and sampling few smaller ones to have zip content).
From those 10 show animation in phone and W10 PC, 20 are dead images though mp4 is embedded and can be viewed separately. Of the 10, 4 are nonsense (only phone movement), 6 legit.

Windows 8.1 live images: 14 (based on mp4.thm files).
From those 14 shows animation on WP8.1 phone, 0 on W10 PC.

I tested with 2 PCs, i3 desktop and fairly recent i3 laptop. Photos app crashes constantly when trying to view phone images with older T5600 (or similar) laptop with preview and AMD x4...

 

[Kimmo Toivanen]

I thought that it is best to reanimate images the same way they are done originally - in .Net using System.Io.Compression.ZipArchive. The result? If I use still image, thumbnail and mp4 clip from working W10M live image, the result is also live. It means that I can create correct kind of zip and embed it after jpeg file. Any other combination - no luck.

There cannot be much difference in thumbnail files as there is no exif data, straight to the image.
Mp4 files - metadata I do not know. WP8.1 example is 20fps, W10M dead example 30fps and live one 15 fps. Maybe the phone didn't get a chance to process the dead one to completion (camera allowed to run in background). Slowing down to 15fps in ffmpeg does not make images to breath.

Still images - that's where it gets complicated. Gimp shows only one difference (other than normal exif) in xmp - <rdfescription xmlns:MicrosoftPhoto='http://ns.microsoft.com/photo/1.0/'> section has additional <MicrosoftPhoto:ItemSubType>Lumia.LivingImage</MicrosoftPhoto:ItemSubType>. Importing that with Gimp to WP8.1 image still keeps it still.

I left feedback to MS to publish the spec. I'd excpect iOs live images to run on W10 Photos before that happens though
Info & suggestions welcome!

 

[bichaels]

WP8.1 living images do play on the windows 10 pc photo app though it is a little hit and miss. What I think worked for me was copying all the files (jpg,tnl,thn) together into a folder before running the photo app. When using the photo app to import the photos it didn't work though all files were copied (and don't like how it arranged the photo into folders so won't be using that again).