apple photos with Videos

[JamesMay82]

Hi Everyone,

I've got a young family and take loads of videos and pictures etc. I've been using Lightroom CC but it doesn't seem to handle video files so well and I was thinking of moving to Apple photos.

Anyone got experience of storing all family videos in the App? are there any limits? I was also thinking of keeping everything in the cloud and just having it optimised on my phone and Mac and downloading when I need it etc

 

[Hunter5117]

About 2 years ago I moved about 20 years of digital photos over to Apple Photos. I had been a big fan of Apple Aperture but I finally had to give it up. Photos had matured enough by then that it did most of what I needed.

In my case, I have a desktop system that is my "central file server" so I keep the Photos system library on that computer with full resolution files stored there, and then backed up to 2 more drives. Plus of course all the files are also in my iCloud drive. All my other systems, MBP, iPad and iPhone have optimized versions of the Photos library.

For videos I like to use FCPX for editing anything substantial. If I shot video on my iPhone, then I do periodically move these videos into the FCPX library. FCPX libraries are not compatible with iCloud so they are also in my 2-drive backup scheme.

What you are asking should be totally do-able. I have the 2TB iCloud plan and that is a lot of photos, not necessarily too much video depending on what resolution you are shooting, 4K Prores files can be huge but you are not likely going to be using that for regular family videos. Others may comment if anyone has run into a limit on iCloud storage especially for videos in their Photos library.

 

[JamesMay82]

About 2 years ago I moved about 20 years of digital photos over to Apple Photos. I had been a big fan of Apple Aperture but I finally had to give it up. Photos had matured enough by then that it did most of what I needed.

In my case, I have a desktop system that is my "central file server" so I keep the Photos system library on that computer with full resolution files stored there, and then backed up to 2 more drives. Plus of course all the files are also in my iCloud drive. All my other systems, MBP, iPad and iPhone have optimized versions of the Photos library.

For videos I like to use FCPX for editing anything substantial. If I shot video on my iPhone, then I do periodically move these videos into the FCPX library. FCPX libraries are not compatible with iCloud so they are also in my 2-drive backup scheme.

What you are asking should be totally do-able. I have the 2TB iCloud plan and that is a lot of photos, not necessarily too much video depending on what resolution you are shooting, 4K Prores files can be huge but you are not likely going to be using that for regular family videos. Others may comment if anyone has run into a limit on iCloud storage especially for videos in their Photos library.

Thanks for the reply - I've just tried a few test files and it works ok so its promising. Just moved in a year with maybe 1000 photos and its very slow to upload.. just my broadband but its still quite painful first time round.

 

[JamesMay82]

About 2 years ago I moved about 20 years of digital photos over to Apple Photos. I had been a big fan of Apple Aperture but I finally had to give it up. Photos had matured enough by then that it did most of what I needed.

In my case, I have a desktop system that is my "central file server" so I keep the Photos system library on that computer with full resolution files stored there, and then backed up to 2 more drives. Plus of course all the files are also in my iCloud drive. All my other systems, MBP, iPad and iPhone have optimized versions of the Photos library.

For videos I like to use FCPX for editing anything substantial. If I shot video on my iPhone, then I do periodically move these videos into the FCPX library. FCPX libraries are not compatible with iCloud so they are also in my 2-drive backup scheme.

What you are asking should be totally do-able. I have the 2TB iCloud plan and that is a lot of photos, not necessarily too much video depending on what resolution you are shooting, 4K Prores files can be huge but you are not likely going to be using that for regular family videos. Others may comment if anyone has run into a limit on iCloud storage especially for videos in their Photos library.

Just to bore you with an update

I moved everything over and most videos but then my photo library got messed up with duplicates and wrong dates etc. potentially down to me merging my wife's photos into mine but either way I've decided to wipe the photos library and start again from my Lightroom library which is stored in finder folders.

Before I Wipe it I'm having to download some of the movies that I didn't move over to final cut and I must admit its been a massive pain in the butt! I've been downloading for 2 days now and its only done 100 gigs. I do have a fast internet so I can't help but think that apple photos maybe doesn't have a speed priority on Apple servers. Going forward I'm going to store apple photos library locally on the comp and will keep the phone and laptop libraries in optimised setting so it just reads from the cloud.