
Apple releases a bit of code to let you put Live Photos on your sites - jackgavigan
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/20/apple-releases-a-bit-of-code-to-let-you-put-live-photos-on-your-sites
======
sharkjacobs
Apple needs to improve the image stabilization on live photos. I like live
photos a lot now, but I had disabled them until I discovered Google's Motion
Stills app.

~~~
fowl2
( iOS only :(
[https://get.google.com/motionstills/](https://get.google.com/motionstills/) )

~~~
timdorr
Live Photos are an iOS only feature, so that makes sense.

Closest thing is Smartburst, which can turn the series of photos into an
animated GIF on the Google Camera app:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.GoogleCamera)

~~~
soylentcola
Yeah, this is a feature I've been using and enjoying since they added it a
while back. I was under the impression that Google created the iOS "Motion
Stills" app to add similar functionality to Apple's built-in Live Photos and
turn then into stabilized animated GIFs so you can get them off your iPhone in
a more widely supported format.

------
aphextron
Is this why Apple won't allow WebM on iOS? It's like they want to pull the web
apart, stick it behind a private API, then sell it back to you piece by piece.

What is this even supposed to be beyond webm/gifv anyways?

~~~
chrisballinger
The main reason they don't allow WebM is because only H.264/H.265 are hardware
accelerated on iOS devices.

~~~
dchest
Sure, but this just rephrases the question as "Why don't they implement
hardware-accelerated WebM?".

~~~
masklinn
Which can then be converted to "Why would they implement hardware-accelerated
WebM, what is the value proposition for Apple?"

Keep in mind that you need enough value gain for them to invest the
engineering and silicon in hardware webm decoding rather than everything else
they're doing.

------
tedmiston
Direct link to Apple demo - [https://developer.apple.com/live-
photos/](https://developer.apple.com/live-photos/)

~~~
ggrochow
Could just be my browser, but it doesn't seem to play very nicely for me (
Firefox on debian jessie ).

First time I tried to hover, it didn't do anything at all, I think it might
have still been loading ( or waiting to load the 'live' version until I hover
over ).

When I got it to actually go 'live' they didn't seem smooth at all, stuff was
jumping all over the place. Though, after watching them both fully, repeat
playbacks seemed fine.

didn't get either of these issues in chrome on the same machine.

~~~
hyperpape
Similar in mobile safari, most recent iOS version (10.3.1). They seemed very
jumpy, not like my own live photos on my phone.

~~~
tedmiston
I'm seeing the same in Mobile Safari though it works normally in Safari on a
Mac.

------
untog
A JS framework to... run play() on a video tag when you tap on it. If this was
released by anyone other than Apple it would be mocked to death.

~~~
tajen
Live Photos pose another problem for me – peer mockery. Here how it goes:

— Press on the pic and it moves. It's magic. It even starts half a second
before the press.

— OMG it looks like journals in Harry Potter!!! Send the Gif to me!

— Nope, can't, not a Gif

— What!? Hahaha! So you neither have proper earphones nor a way to back up
your Live photos!?

I bought the iPhone 7 for the secure enclave and for Tim's standoff against
the FBI, and Safari's reading mode is a bonus against ads, but the social
standing of owning an iPhone is not what it used to be...

~~~
HappyTypist
GIFs are too heavily compressed, with too few colors, etc.

Pretty much all iOS apps support live photos; you can iMessage them; you can
even download apps to get the video file or convert it to a GIF.

~~~
onion2k
_GIFs are too heavily compressed, with too few colors, etc._

 _Technically_ GIFs can have as many colors as you like. Each frame can have
its own 256 color palette, and any transparent pixels are left the color of
the pixel from the previous frame, so you can build up a full color image over
time. This is silly and you'd never actually do it, but still, it is possible.

Technical explanation and demo: [https://notes.tweakblogs.net/blog/8712/high-
color-gif-images...](https://notes.tweakblogs.net/blog/8712/high-color-gif-
images.html)

~~~
Malic
I've been wondering how that's done for some time now - thanks for pointing
me/us in the direction of that article!

------
eehee
I played around with this, but had some trouble removing the audio stream from
the MOV file using ffmpeg. There's a third data stream in the file, and ffmpeg
doesn't know how to handle it, so it either gets removed or replaced with
dummy data. The javascript framework seems to need this third stream to work,
which is pretty annoying...

I'd love to do something with this, but without a simple (and preferably
scriptable) way to remove the audio I probably won't...

------
msoad
Safari has 3DTouch aka ForceTouch APIs but this doesn't seem to be using it.
Weird

------
kristofferR
It's pretty bad that this one works halfway on iOS Safari:
[https://imgur.com/a/3P7hD](https://imgur.com/a/3P7hD)

As you can see, the text selection pop up is visible while playing the Live
Photo.

------
la_oveja
Okay, so what differentiates a Live Photo from a jpg&webm combo? It does have
a proprietary format or it is saved as a zip?

~~~
pluma
Ah, you see, a HTML5 video tag with a webm and `poster` image doesn't have the
blurry transition when switching between the still image and the video as well
as when looping the video. Also of course iOS doesn't support WebM and HTML5
video on iOS is not intended to be used for anything other than full-screen
videos because Apple knows best and actually supporting HTML5 media properly
would ruin performance (as would supporting WebM without the same
optimisations Apple made for H.264).

Also of course Live Photos are totally different because they're from Apple,
not based on any of those cruddy and boring "open standards".

\--

But to be serious for a moment: the main difference is that iOS treats them as
a thing (unlike a plain "video plus image" combo), so the entire user
experience surrounding them is different from recording to sharing them. And
technically the still image is higher res whereas the video is lower res (with
video+image the image is generally a still frame so res tends to be the same).

------
tzakrajs
Very choppy on Android Chrome Browser running on an LG V20

------
arrty88
apple trying to steal imgur's thunder i see

------
personjerry
Next up: You can now get Stories on all Apple iCloud connected platforms!

------
metaphor
What differentiates a _Live Photo_ from a GIF?

What exactly is an Apple _site_?

~~~
shadowfiend
Live Photos combine two things: the 3s video capture (1.5s before and 1.5s
after you take the picture) at relatively low resolution, _and the actual
photo that is taken at full camera resolution_. GIFs are missing the latter,
and are more flexible in terms of length and what have you. This particular
presentation also sticks to Apple's standard presentation of Live Photos: as a
static high-res photo with an encircled play button (in some cases including
the world LIVE) that triggers the associated low-res video.

EDIT: No idea what you're asking about re: an Apple site. This is Apple
releasing JS to make it easy to display a Live Photo on any site.

~~~
metaphor
Thanks for clarifying.

The Apple _site_ question was me thinking that the API was part of some sort
of web front-end that only Apple users were privy to, if you will.

------
pedalpete
Could this be a sign that Apple is beginning to 'get' web services? Their new
maps in 3d is industry leading, but is missing a web api, and you still need
an AppleId to view it.

~~~
threeseed
Apple 'gets' web services. They run some of the largest web services platforms
in the world i.e. iCloud, Messages, iTunes Store, Apple Online Store.

They just choose not to release an advertising supported Maps platform because
(a) advertising goes against their strong privacy/security message and (b) it
doesn't offer anything unique or valuable to the market. To be honest I don't
think they would've even gone into Maps if Google hadn't played hard ball
during the iPhone 1 days.

~~~
tyingq
Somewhat related...what does Apple have in their data centers?

I'm curious if they run their own sort of hackintoshes for the density of
racked servers. Or if they run some other OS, or just shelves of Pros?

~~~
no_wizard
I've accidentally hit a error or 2 on their website over the years. Backend
linux all the way, I think mostly redhat / centOS given the JBOSS errors.

Anyone can feel free to correct me.

~~~
kejaed
If you search around their job site you'll find jobs with RHEL and Ubuntu as
keywords

------
metaphor
A quick Google search for _apple live photo patent_ produced this article[1]
from back in January. Patent description here[2].

Seriously sounds like Apple is posturing to reap some buku royalties if this
proprietary method gains traction.

[1] [https://www.appleworld.today/blog/2017/1/19/apples-
dynamic-c...](https://www.appleworld.today/blog/2017/1/19/apples-dynamic-
cinemagraph-presentations-patent-filing-takes-live-photos-to-another-level)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/patents/US20170017616](https://www.google.com/patents/US20170017616)

~~~
nudpiedo
This concern plus the fact that the license they use is by no means a common
OS license. I also think that is a way to make some side cash but live photos
didn't take that much over in the popular culture.

