Beware, iCloud video file storage compression can ruin your larger stored media files

[pm-r]

I just want to let people know who use iCloud for any valuable file storage about it seems that any video .mpg4 files saved to one's iCloud storage get compressed and then my recent case the compression was so severe the movie my son created for me is virtually useless.

Apple should be charged with video-slaughter even if such a thing doesn't actually exist.

I misplaced the original copy my son created and sent me several years ago and he sent me his backup coffee he had stored in his iCloud share folder.

I can't believe how bad the resulting file is and basically it ruined the whole movie at least the visuals and colours are concerned. The only thing that stayed intact and useful was the movie's music.

So if anyone is using iCloud for such file storage, they may want to reconsider their options.

icloud and video cpompression
A: iCloud primarily reduces the size of large multimedia files like photos and videos using lossy compression. Documents and text files usually undergo lossless compression to maintain their integrity and quality.Jul 15, 2024

Does iCloud Drive Compress Files? Find Out How iCloud Handles File Sizes

Does iCloud Drive compress files? Learn if your data is altered and how iCloud manages storage efficiency for your documents and media.

www.multcloud.com

Pretty poor Apple.




- Patrick
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[ferrarr]

Didn't they only put a "copy" of the movie on iCloud? Was the movie made in the Camera app or saved in Photos?

 

[MacInWin]

Interesting, Patrick. I use Photos to keep my various images and videos in iCloud, not iCloud Drive, but when I downloaded a video from iCloud, the image was very sharp, with no artifacts of compression at all. Perhaps it's more in HOW the file was stored in iCloud, or how it was downloaded? Or, as Bob said, it could be that if this video was outside Photos, it got compressed as part of the general process of being evicted from your son's machine if he has "Optimize" and iCloud Drive both on?

 

[pm-r]

Didn't they only put a "copy" of the movie on iCloud? Was the movie made in the Camera app or saved in Photos?

I'm not sure what they did or how it was made, all I know is my son did the original filming using his iPhone and then added music and maybe edited the the footage when he got back home in White Horse.
The original footage and movie was made in the fall of 2021 so I'm guessing it got archived up to his iCloud account and no backup made locally which is a bit odd for him.

Anyway, my main purpose of posting was to alert people who use iCloud how it is likely to compress and ruin any of their large photo or movie files they are relying on being stored there in case they ever need to recover them to use as they were originally created.



- Patrick
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[pm-r]

Perhaps it's more in HOW the file was stored in iCloud, or how it was downloaded?

Thanks Jake, and unfortunately I'm not sure of all the details of how the original file was handled by my son, found as I couldn't find my own copy of the original he had sent me I asked him if he had a copy.
He was also surprised to find he didn't have it on his normal storage drives so sent me a link to his iCloud share folder that I went to using my Google Chrome browser downloaded the iCloud backup copy to my desktop.

I was actually quite shocked when I opened it to see how bad it was presumably from the compression but some part of iCloud prefer arms on the file.

I guess the moral of the story is for users to double-check and do a trial run of some of their large photo and video files they have stored somewhere related to iCloud and make sure then open and display as expected.




- Patrick
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