Photo Libraries and HEIF/HEVC

[cmChimera]

I haven't seen a specific thread on this, and I'm curious to know if Photos will convert older photos and videos to the new format and save space, or if there is a concern that the reformat would diminish quality. Anyone know?

 

[EugW]

That would not be a good idea IMO because you're going from a lossy format to another lossy format. Yes, it is a real concern. Just leave the old stuff alone and save your space with the new stuff.

But for the record, Photos in High Sierra did not attempt to convert any of my videos or photos, thankfully.

 

[Absrnd]

But for the record, Photos in High Sierra did not attempt to convert any of my videos or photos, thankfully.

Is there an option to convert ?

 

[cmChimera]

That would not be a good idea IMO because you're going from a lossy format to another lossy format. Yes, it is a real concern. Just leave the old stuff alone and save your space with the new stuff.

But for the record, Photos in High Sierra did not attempt to convert any of my videos or photos, thankfully.

This is pretty much what I thought. It was just unclear from the presentation/website. Thanks!

Is there an option to convert ?

Doesn't look like it.

 

[gmanist1000]

I haven't figured out how to convert images to HEIF yet but did create a quick video for video conversion to HEVC. Hopefully it's built into Compressor/Automator at some point in a later release.

I think you would need to pull your videos files out of Photos, convert them, them put them back in.

 

[Mehaly]

Check this thread out. I have some news about it:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-converted-into-heif-or-only-new-one.2054450/

 

[MattXDA]

No conversion of older assets

 

[Superhai]

You can use ffmpeg and the HEIF example source from Nokia to convert image files to HEIF. I want to warn you though, loading heif pictures is slow on older Macs,and converting is an even more time consuming task.
Apple has never converted formats in Photos before, I have lots of photos in RAW/TIFF/JPEG formats and they stay that way, so I can't really not see any reason why Apple would suddenly start to convert older, especially lossy compressed files now.