Vertical/portrait HD videos being downsampled by 9x. Original data lost?

MatthewTM

Previously, when I uploaded a video (from an iPhone 6s or 7, via IE or Chrome), the download resolution would be 1:1, regardless of landscape vs. portrait orientation.
• Upload a landscape 1920x1080 .MOV file, and have ability to download at same 1920x1080 resolution .mp4 file. :)
• Upload a portrait 1080x1920 .MOV file, and have ability to download at same 1080x1920 resolution .mp4 file. :)

Since at least April, the verticals appear to be downsampled, while the landscapes are still 1:1.
• Upload a landscape 1920x1080 .MOV file, and have ability to download at same 1920x1080 resolution .mp4 file. :)
• Upload a portrait 1080x1920 .MOV file, and <b> now only have ability to download at lesser 360x640 .mp4 file. That's only 1/9th the data!! Is the original size lost forever?!? :'(

Andy and Tristan from SmugMug Support have confirmed this is a bug, but Engineers have not be able to report any sort of progress or a fix ETA in months.

Have others found a workaround? What reassurance do we have that SmugMug servers have truly/safely preserved the full-size video files, even if owners cannot access them?

leftquark

Thanks for passing this along. I've bubbled this up to our Engineering team's attention and I'll have an update for you soon. We also have a new process in place to handle issues like this so they will alert the team immediately.

I was able to confirm that we do have all the full resolution video files preserved.

MatthewTM

That interim news is reassuring -- thank you for the update and insight!

leftquark

Just an update: Our engineering team continues to work on this. I'll try to keep you updated along the way.

MatthewTM

This bug appears to be resolved. Thank you to you, leftquart, and the engineering team.

leftquark

Yep! You beat me to it. I was just about to post that we've fixed the issue. We'd like to go back through older vertical videos and re-process them so they'll be higher quality but we're not sure when this will happen. Best bet right now is to re-upload those videos if you'd like them higher quality.