Back up Live Photos to a USB drive — paired HEIC + MOV
A Live Photo is two files glued together by metadata. If a backup keeps only the still and drops the motion, the photo stops being a Live Photo. AmberTime treats the pair as one unit and writes them atomically to your USB drive or external SSD.
Quick answer
AmberTime backs up each Live Photo as a paired .HEIC still and .MOV motion clip with matching file basenames. Both files are written together for the same photo before the next item starts. Restoring or re-importing the pair brings the Live Photo back to life.
What a Live Photo actually is
Despite the name, a Live Photo is not a single video file. It is two resources that PhotoKit ties together:
- A HEIC still — the high-resolution photo, with EXIF, color profile, and depth where applicable.
- A MOV motion clip — about 1.5 seconds of video plus audio, captured around the moment the shutter fired.
The Photos app shows them as one item. On disk, on a Mac, or on a USB drive, they live as two files with matching basenames such as IMG_4821.HEIC and IMG_4821.MOV.
How AmberTime preserves the pair
AmberTime queries PhotoKit for both resources of every Live Photo. For each item, the backup engine:
- Writes the HEIC original to its Photos/YYYY-MM/ folder, using a temporary .part file before final rename.
- Writes the matching MOV with the same basename, also through a .part file.
- Records both as completed only after both have been written successfully. If the run is interrupted between the two, the pair is treated as not-yet-completed and is retried on the next run.
The result on the drive is two files per Live Photo, sitting next to each other, ready to be re-paired by any tool that understands the convention.
Where the Live Photo plays after backup
| Where | Live Photo behavior |
|---|---|
| iPhone after restoring the pair | Plays as a Live Photo with motion when long-pressed. |
| Photos app on Mac (after import) | Recognizes the pair and plays the motion natively. |
| Finder on Mac | HEIC opens as still, MOV plays as a short clip. The pairing is implicit by basename. |
| Windows Explorer | Same as Finder: two files, two viewers, no automatic pairing UI. |
| Lightroom / Capture One | Recognize Live Photos and treat the pair as one asset for editing. |
Restoring a Live Photo from the drive
To bring a Live Photo back into a photo library:
Keep the pair together
Copy both IMG_xxxx.HEIC and IMG_xxxx.MOV at the same time, into the same destination folder.
Import as a unit
Photos on Mac and many third-party apps detect the matching basenames and import the pair as a single Live Photo asset.
Verify
Long-press the imported asset on iPhone or hover-play in Photos on Mac to confirm motion plays.
If only the HEIC is in the destination folder, the import becomes a regular still photo. The MOV needs to be next to it for the pair to be recognized.
Other paired resources AmberTime preserves
The same pair-aware behavior applies to other multi-resource photos that PhotoKit exposes:
- RAW + JPEG — both resources are written when the source includes them.
- ProRAW — written as the original DNG with metadata intact.
- ProRes — large MOV files are streamed in 4 MB chunks; no in-memory load of the full clip.
In all cases, AmberTime treats one PhotoKit asset as one logical unit and only marks it complete when every resource it owns has been written.
FAQ
Will my Live Photos still play after backup?
Yes, as long as both files are present together. AmberTime writes them as an atomic pair to avoid splitting them.
What if only the HEIC made it to the drive?
That should not normally happen because the pair is treated as one unit. If it does, run the backup again — the missing MOV will be retransferred.
Does AmberTime re-encode Live Photos?
No. The HEIC and MOV on your drive are the original PhotoKit resources, byte-for-byte.
Can Windows users see the Live Photo motion?
Windows Explorer treats them as two separate files. Apps like Lightroom can recognize the pair. The motion clip itself is just a normal MOV that any video player will play.