A small script to create Motion Photo v2/v3 from HEIC or JPG files and videos. Resulting files appear to be compatible with Google Photos and Samsung Gallery as a motion/live photo.
In case the source is an iPhone Live Photo, the presentation timestamp will be migrated as well, thus the photo will start from the same keyframe.
Photos are created to mimic the way Galaxy S23 Ultra and Tab S9 phones create HEIC and JPG motion photos. This format internally refers to itself as mpv2 (and recently also mpv3), thus the name of this script.
Please install ExifTool so that it is added to your path. The easiest is to use installer by Oliver Betz. Use the file "ExifTool_install_nn.nn_64.exe" and accept all defaults.
Then download the Windows release and enjoy!
The script requires ExifTool on your computer. Once you have exiftool installed, download the respective release for your OS and extract the binary file from the zip archive.
Open the terminal and navigate to the directory where the file is extracted. Then make sure the file is executable by running the command in the terminal:
chmod +x motionphoto2
You may now run the binary either by double-clicking on it from your file explorer or typing the following in the terminal:
./motionphoto2
If you have both exiftool and python 3.7+ installed, the script works just by calling motionphoto2.py (with parameters if required). Please install prerequisities using pip install -r requirements.txt
Just run the script! If you run it without parameters, it'll present a GUI with explanations. Alternatively, you can use it using commandline as per below examples.
To convert an image and video pair to a Motion Photo v2, run:
motionphoto2 --input-image ImageFile.HEIC --input-video VideoFile.MP4
The script will match image and video files automatically by filenames when run from commandline. Only direct match (e.g. IMG_1234.HEIC and IMG_1234.MOV)
motionphoto2 --input-directory /your/directory
If you add the --exif-match option, the script will automatically match image and video files in the specified directory using EXIF metadata.
This ensures accurate pairing for sources from iPhone Live Photos, even if filenames differ. For example, it can correctly match IMG_1234.HEIC with IMG_1234(2).MOV and ignore the seemingly correct match IMG_1234.HEIC + IMG_1234.MOV. (Very useful for Google Takeout or iCloud Photos Downloader)
motionphoto2 --input-directory /your/directory --exif-match
- The output of new image files will be: original_name.LIVE.ext (unless overridden).
- If you want to process recursively all subdirectories, use:
--recursive. - If you provide an
--output-directory, the file will be saved as: output-directory/original_name.ext. - While the script muxes the image and video, two temp files will be created and deleted automatically; keep them with
--keep-temp. - To replace the original image file with the live one, use:
--overwrite(use at your risk). - To remove the video file after muxing, use:
--delete-video(use at your risk). - To use EXIF matching instead of filename matching, use:
--exif-match - To copy files other than live/motion photo muxing during directory processing, use:
--copy-unmuxed - To skip muxing if destination is already a motion photo use:
--incremental-mode(Useful for performing incremental photo library updates)
If the source image is an Apple HDR HEIC image, Google Photos will say that the resulting photo is not HDR. This is not true - if you save the photo back to iPhone camera roll, you'll see the photo is HDR.
Google Photos will actually show it too, but only when it is stored in local photos on an iPhone/iPad.
The reason is probably directly related to Motion Photos - the same place where Motion Photos are defined (in XMP object GCamera - http://ns.google.com/photos/1.0/camera/) is also the place where Google/Android stores JPEG/R HDR information.
It appears that the server-side processing of Google Photos does not check for Apple HDR once it finds Google Camera header in XMP tags. For JPG files, a conversion is possible by adjusting metadata and is on the roadmap. Unfortunately there is no support for Gainmap HDR HEIF images in libultrahdr or any modern Android devices at the moment.
Hopefully, as Gainmap HDR matures, both Google and Apple will converge on ISO/CD 21496-1 and things will just start working. On Apple side this has happened already - as of iOS18 RC on iPhone 15(pro), iOS stores HDR in ISO tmap format for both JPG and HEIF. Unfortunately iPhones 12-14 are stuck with Apple Gainmaps (for JPGs, it should be possible to remux them to ISO format, though). On Google side keep an eye on libultrahdr used in Android and also most likely in GPhotos backend. It currently only supports JPEG/R, but HEIC support is on the way.
Huge thanks to @Tkd-Alex for porting the original PowerShell script to Python. It is now much faster and easier to adjust to boot.
Thanks to @NightMean for implementing the exif metadata matching. Thanks to @sahilph for copying of non-live photos in dir mode.
Thanks to @tribut, @Tkd-Alex, @4Urban, @IamRysing and @NightMean for providing sample Motion Photo pictures (check them out here)
Google official documentation of the format
Samsung trailer tags are well explained in doodspav's repo
HEIC muxing is similar to doodspav's work, but additionally uses MP4 top-level boxes "mpvd" and "sefd" to add the MP data into heic and mp4 in standard-compliant way (see source in this repo).