Is the file format of Apple's "Live Photos" the same as Google's "Motion Photos"?

Question

Some modern smartphones allow you to take photos that are actually brief silent videos (a few seconds long):

• Apple calls this feature Live Photos
• Some Google Pixel phones have a feature called motion photos.
• Google Research have also released an Android app called Motion Stills
• Some Samsung phones have a feature called Motion Photos.
• Some Huawei phones have a feature called moving pictures.
• Some Motorola phones have a feature called moving photos.

Do these all use the same file format? Or do they use different file formats?

Underwing

Answer 1

The simple answer is no - they are not the same and not interoperable and to display each you would have to modify or even completely rewrite image and/or video codecs and even players.

I don't know if you will be able to find 'an extensive comparison between these formats' because the majority of the modern device vendors(excluding Apple of course - because it always uses the 'special' format for everything it does) create their own format and approach.

I don't know all the specifics but from my experience, some vendors store their Live Photos as GIF files, some as an image with a 3gp or some type of AVC video attached. In some of them, there is a possibility to capture audio and some are mute. Some a represented as two files and some a packaged as a zip folder with a specific extension.

Even those who are represented as image and video are different - sometimes it is one image before the video, sometimes before and after, and sometimes it is a middle frame of the video.

Regarding export - some of them are exportable and some a not, and the latter is not about Apple only. So, yeah...

Choreographer

Answer 2

"Motion photos" have not been standardized at all, at least in the method of storing the video. Apple's way of doing it is rather conservative, giving you the original still image and H.264 file containing the actual video. Google has it's own proprietary way of doing this, opting to use the JPEG format but just appending an H.264 stream after the image data.

Storing the actual video seems to be generally done within H.264, but it isn't actually standardized, and the method of actually storing this image (as a seperate file or as part of the image itself is definitely not standardized. If you're planning to develop an app that accepts these files, you're better off just looking for a still image, as that's what most phones will provide anyways.

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