How do I merge a heic file with its OG live photo?

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Level 1

4 points

How do I merge a heic file with its OG live photo?

I have been on a long journey to move my photos (iPhone 14) to my computer (hope it's okay its not a mac.) I take a lot of my photos in Live Mode, and I believe it's causing an issue, despite these photos on my phone already having Live Photo off. All my photos that were in live mode are now .mov files, and have not retained the frame I picked for it to have, and well, it's no longer a png. How do I merge the HEIC files with my desired frame back into their OGs or convert them to their pngs form?

Windows, Windows 11 (26100)

Posted on Jun 5, 2025 8:23 PM

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Answer 1

Jun 5, 2025 9:47 PM in response to BerryBee33

Apple "Live Photo" .jpg or .heic has a "sidecar" .mov file. The key metadata item in Live photos is ContentIdentifier. It has to be identical in both the image and the movie. When importing such pair, Photos.app automatically displays them as one although they are separate files.

Do you still have both files or has some workflow lost the image?

exiftool -a -G1 -s -ContentIdentifier .
======== ./2024-0305-1201-37_01.mov
[Keys]          ContentIdentifier               : A3E5437B-626A-42FE-9B6E-1791337877BF
======== ./2024-0305-1201-37_01.jpg
[Apple]         ContentIdentifier               : A3E5437B-626A-42FE-9B6E-1791337877BF

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Answer 2

BerryBee33 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 5, 2025 10:28 PM in response to Matti Haveri

I have both files, and right now I do have OGs for ones I haven’t permanently deleted yet. I’ve paused deleting them fully just in case. I’m not very tech smart but I’ll see if I can find where your instructions are on my computer tomorrow.

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Answer 3

Jun 6, 2025 9:27 AM in response to markwmsn

markwmsn wrote: Last I heard, Live Photos didn't exist on Windows or in PNG form. Has that changed?

Me, too. Live Photos is an Apple creation, a clever way to combine a still and a movie, and there's no standard method of including them in a special package that other apps understand. As Matti says, when an original Live Photo is exported, Photos sends a still file, like heic, and a mov file--each having the same base file name. Photos can put them together, but other apps don't know how, though I'm not sure why-- it doesn't seem that hard. Maybe it's patented?

Do you find an HEIC for every mov?

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Answer 4

BerryBee33 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 6, 2025 12:32 PM in response to Richard.Taylor

I'm pretty sure there's a HEIC for every mov, since the number of HEICs I have seem to fit my amount of MOVs. Really do hope there's a way to put them together! I want a photo of my cat not a 2 second mov lol.

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Answer 5

Jun 6, 2025 2:30 PM in response to BerryBee33

BerryBee33 wrote: … I want a photo of my cat not a 2 second mov lol.

Well, you have a photo of your cat among the HEICs, apparently. But you don't have a Live Photo, unless you use Apple Photos.

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Answer 6

markwmsn

Level 6

16,229 points

Jun 5, 2025 9:54 PM in response to BerryBee33

Last I heard, Live Photos didn't exist on Windows or in PNG form. Has that changed?

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