How to Turn a Video into a Live Photo
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Live Photos are a unique feature from Apple that combine photography with video clips, turning still images into short video files. When you create Live Photos, you bring your pictures to life, capturing your memories with dynamic movement and sound.
But have you ever wanted to convert video files to Live Photos? If you want to create a vibrant live wallpaper or share your media in a more immersive format, you’re in luck! It’s actually pretty simple to convert Live Photos to videos and vice versa. Let’s take a look at the various methods you can use to turn videos into Live Photos with top-notch quality. Along the way, we’ll also examine some other fun features of Apple’s Live Photo ecosystem.
What Are Live Photos?
Before we explain the conversion process, let’s briefly discuss what Live Photos are. Apple’s Live Photos feature captures a total of three seconds of video and audio — 1.5 seconds each before and after you press the shutter button. It’s an exclusive feature for Apple devices that operate on iOS 9 and later. So, if you have an iPhone 6 or newer model — or an iPad from the fifth generation or later — you can take and edit Live Photos with your device.
Live Photos have quite a few potential applications. You can set them as live wallpapers on your lock screen, share them with your friends and family, convert them to video, upload them to social media platforms, and more. You can even convert Live Photos to GIFs and use them as stickers in your iMessages. In short, with Live Photos, you can create an immersive experience that a simple still image can’t.
Methods to Convert Video into a Live Photo
Unfortunately, you can’t transform videos into Live Photos using Apple’s proprietary Photos app. That said, the process is still quite simple and only requires a few basic steps. The first step is downloading a third-party app, and there are several different options you can use.
Here are the top two options, along with brief rundowns that explain how they work.
intoLive App
intoLive is one of the most popular and user-friendly options for turning videos into Live Photos. It’s a free app, but be aware that there are potential in-app purchases for certain advanced features and unlimited usage subscriptions. intoLive has outstanding ratings on the App Store, with an average score of 4.6 out of 5 and around 100,000 reviews.
intoLive offers users the ability to convert multiple media types into Live Photos, including videos and GIFs. The app creates crystal-clear vertical videos with a 9:16 aspect ratio, which means it’s the perfect choice for creating social media content for your TikTok account or Instagram Reels.
Here’s a convenient step-by-step guide on how to use intoLive to generate Live Photos:
- Download and Install the App: First, you’ll need to get the intoLive app from the App Store and install it on your device.
- Launch intoLive: Open the app and provide it with access to your stored photos and videos.
- Choose Your Video: Next, select the video from your camera roll that you want to convert into a Live Photo. If it’s longer than three seconds, you can cut the video down to select a specific segment.
- Edit Your Video: This step isn’t strictly required, but intoLive offers quite a few fun editing features that you can use to add some extra flair to your Live Photo. You can also choose a “canvas format,” a specialized media format for specific social media types (TikTok, Reels, Shorts, etc.).
- Create Live Photo: Once you’re happy with your editing efforts, simply tap the “Make” button to generate your new Live Photo.
- Save the New File: Save Live Photos to your device — at this point, you’re ready to click the Share icon to share them with friends, post them to social media, set them as your home screen wallpaper, and more.
We mentioned that intoLive has a bunch of other cool features, so let’s quickly run them down. The app offers quite a few video editing options beyond creating Live Photos. For instance, you can merge multiple video clips and combine various file formats (photos, videos, Live Photos, and GIFs) into one seamless file. intoLive is compatible with all iPhone media formats, as well.
Another popular feature is the ability to add effects, text, and stickers to your files to make them stand out. intoLive even allows you to add background music — it has more than 100 royalty-free music tracks, or you can add music from iTunes.
Finally, intoLive has some great editing tools that will have you creating Live Photos like a pro. Features like Clip Motion — a slideshow feature that intoLive refers to as “the Ken Burns effect” — are always popular, and the app also allows you to adjust a video’s speed, crop it, flip it, and much more.
VideoToLive App
Although VideoToLive isn’t quite as popular as intoLive (VideoToLive has a 4.1 average score with roughly 5,500 reviews on the App Store), it has some welcome features that make it a great option in its own right. Like intoLive, it’s a free app with optional paid features.
VideoToLive is an efficient tool that makes it easy to convert videos to Live Photos. It allows users to combine multiple video clips, create video collages, and convert Live Photos back into video format.
Here’s some more information on how you can use VideoToLive to turn a video into a Live Photo:
- Download and Install: Find VideoToLive in the Apple App Store and install it on your iPhone or iPad.
- Open the App: Launch the VideoToLive app and allow it to access your media library and camera roll.
- Select Your Video: Choose a video from your gallery that you’d like to transform into a Live Photo.
- Edit the Video: If desired, you can trim the video for length or adjust its settings to suit your needs.
- Generate a Live Photo: Tap the “Convert” button to create your Live Photo.
- Save the Live Photo File: Select “Save” to download the Live Photo to your Photos app and use it as you like!
VideoToLive doesn’t have quite as many additional features as intoLive, but it does have several that are well worth mentioning. Like intoLive, VideoToLive also allows users to combine multiple video clips into one Live Photo, and it also has a video collage feature.
One unique feature that we really appreciate is how VideoToLive doesn’t just let you turn a video into a Live Photo — it also offers the ability to convert Live Photos back into videos! Simply tap Live Photos and add them to VideoToLive’s “Live Photo to Video Converter.”
Other Fun Functions of Live Photos
We already mentioned how you can use VideoToLive to transform Live Photos into videos, but there are a couple of other Live Photo features we want to discuss before we wrap things up.
Capturing Still Photos From Live Photos
Would you like to turn a Live Photo into a still image? In a few quick steps, you can pull out a still photo that you can use as your social media profile picture or print for framing. First, open the Photos app and choose the Live Photo. Then, click on the “Share” icon and select “Duplicate.” Finally, select “Duplicate as Still Photo” to create a traditional photo file.
Setting and Changing Key Photos
A key photo is a Live Photo’s preview image in the Photos App. To set it or change it, open your desired Live Photo and click the “Edit” button in the upper right corner of the screen. You can then adjust the slider to the frame you want as the key image. It’s just that easy!
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