Videos Sent Through iMessage End Up Being Lower Quality

[MichaelMidnight]

Here's the issue: I'm taking 4K video of family and sending these clips to family members in a family chat though iMessage. We all have iPhones, have the latest updates, and don't have "Low Quality Image Mode" enabled. But it always seems that any 4k HVEC video I send over gets turned into 720p H.264. For some reason, it's getting degraded. I even tried with someone else who sent me a 4k video which I was able to download as 4k. But when I did the same, my 4k video turned into 720p for them.

And there's been a variety of supposed reasons and possibilities online. Some have said it's an issue between carriers, or signal degradation from wifi/LTE. I have seen mention it's due to the iCloud photo backup setting of Keep Original vs Optimal Storage. Maybe even some sort of funkyness between different Camera settings with the format (but best I know we all have the same High Efficiency selected).

I'm just not sure if anyone else is experiencing this or even have a fix. I'm going to see if I can get Apple to look into this but this seems such a niche issue I dunno. The only thing I can at least be glad is that at least each user's iphone will retain the original quality of what taken as video or photos. And we're all on iCloud via a family plan so the originals are on the cloud.

 

[jav6454]

Try turning "Low Quality Image" mode on, send something, then turn it off and try sending something again. Also, check your carrier settings online (not on your iPhone). Some carriers have data saver mode on by default and will not tell you. I know AT&T does this and I had to turn it off.

 

[MichaelMidnight]

Weird, both Apple and Carrier, T-Mobile, isn't on with my phone so I need to check with my family but I had tried this with a friend outside of my family and on a different network. I got their 4k video but when they got mine it was converted to 720p :/ still not sure what is going on and I swear this was a recent development. Like it happened on and off before iOS16/iPhone14 but only become WHOLLY present after iOS16 and iPhone 14...