New user having some trouble with videos

janineannejanineanne Registered Users Posts: 3 Beginner grinner
edited July 10, 2017 in SmugMug Support
Hi, brand new around here!

I take both photos and videos, but my primary reason for using Smugmug is video organization. My husband and I are dancers, and we accumulate videos of our competitions, workshops and private lessons. I have been searching for a while for an online solution that will help me keep them organized and accessible to all our devices. Smugmug is close, but I'm having a couple of issues:

1. I created a Smart Gallery with one rule, date taken between 1/1/2017 and 12/31/17. There are plenty of videos from this year, but none of them are matching the rule, only photos. I can't find anything about this in the documentation; is it a bug or a "feature"?

2. In the official Smugmug iOS app I chose a couple of my galleries (which contained only videos) for offline viewing. There was no sign of anything downloading, and when I put the phone into airplane mode sure enough, the videos could not play. In fact, they would not play even with wifi connected; the activity spinner would go for a while and then seem to give up. I tried a different app, a very primitive free downloader, and it was able to download them properly. Am I misunderstanding how the Smugmug app works?

Any help would be appreciated! I have a week left in my free trial so I don't have a lot of time left to figure out if this is going to work for me. Thanks in advance!

Edited to add a third question:

3. I really want Google-Photos-like automatic upload of everything from my Camera Roll on my iPhone to Smugmug. It looks like the only way to get that is with a third-party app called Photosync and setting it to initiate upload when I reach a specific location. This is better than nothing but not exactly ideal. Is there a better way?

Comments

  • docwalkerdocwalker Registered Users Posts: 1,867 SmugMug Employee
    1. Videos do not contain the same metadata as photos when processed on SmugMug. Data Taken etc are not included. The videos would not come up in search and that means that the Smart Gallery rules will also not find them.
    2. There is an issue with the SmugMug App currently that could be related. A new version of the app should be coming soon. It should help. If you still have problems after that update, please let us know.
    3. At this time no. Sorry, it is on our feature request list. Maybe in the future. I know I would love it. I always forget to upload new photos.
    SmugMug Support Hero
    http://help.smugmug.com
  • janineannejanineanne Registered Users Posts: 3 Beginner grinner
    Thanks, Doc! :)

    Can you explain more about the metadata? Support told me that the EXIF data is stripped out of videos when they're processed, but when I look at a video on the Smugmug website I see EXIF data for my videos. A bit fewer fields than for photos, but it's there. Why does that not work for smart rules?

    I just downloaded the iOS app update and the problems with playing and downloading videos do seem to be fixed.

    Thanks!
Sign In or Register to comment.