Instamemories guide to real time photo and video sharing with iPhones in the deep woods

Now that everyone has an iPhone. I’ll cover dealing with Android next

Take Photos Live and Airplane Mode OFF

The most confusing thing is the number of different ways to share things. But assuming that you have IOS 13 on your iPad here’s what to do. This assumes that you are remote and there is no internet at all

First make sure that all your phones are running with Airplane off. You want tho GPS information on and the only way to do that is to have airplane mode off. You can turn off WiFi though as there isn’t much signal out there.

Make sure to have Live on by the way. This makes the photos way more interesting in slides.

And take some panoramic shots. Although video works better in Memories. See below.

When you get home Airdrop them all to your iPad

This is the tricky part because of various security settings. First turn on bluetooth and WiFi for all the devices. Even though these are not connected. The WiFi will be used for airdrop

Now make sure that every phone has the contact email and phon number for your iPad’s Apple account. This is because the default authentication only allows airdrop between contacts.

If you want to skip this step then go to airdrop in settings and allow everyone. Hit turn this off later as it’s a security hole.

Now for each iPhone that was taking pictures. Go to the the Photos application. With the new iOS 13 if you choose select then you should see a Select All button and then choose the sharing button at lower left. Then you have to be patient and wait for something at the top called the AirDrop pane and you should eventually see the iPad to then. Click send.

Make sure if you have iOS 13 that you click on the ring little options button when you do and selected “complete” because this will send the actual HEIC format. This allows non destructive edits of everything.

What happens is Bluetooth is used for identification and then ad hoc WiFi is used to transfer the files.

iPad editing

Now if you are lucky or smart enough to get an iPad Pro with a Trutone display. These are 2018 or later then you can start editing. The new iPad had really accurate colors and ios 13 finally makes it easy to edit.

I normally just do light editing so that is cropping out stuff and also using the light pain of some photos are underexposed. This seems a particular problem with the

Doing a slideshow each day

Ok this is the confusing part. It’s time to show things off. You actually have three completely different choices and getting to each is supper confusing but they are Slideshow, Memories and iMovie in order of difficulty.

It’s a hit of archeology but the best way is actually Memories but it is super not obvious how to get it to work. And it only works for aggregation that is by time and date. So for instance in your timeline. You will see dates like Today and Yesterday. It also groups this by location. At the top of each group you will see the word Select and the three dots click on that and select Play Movie. This will automatically generate a movie from those photos.

It actually selects photos and selects a length. If you want to edit it it will say “Create a moment”. This is confusing because the name in iOS 13 changed to Memories but what it does is to say the moment there. Then you can edit it

The most important thing to do is to select photos and click on the plus. Then you can see all the photos it selected for the movie. You can select and deselect to override its choices.

Then you can select music. It comes with some downloaded by default and seems to pick a selection of what music you have downloaded on your machine.

Then add a title and click play. Prepare for all the accolades. Note that once you have a moment it is saved and you can render the move by clicking on share and then it will save the movie as a video.

One note is that when you are doing this do not use the multitasking features like slide over. If you do the movie will be very lower resolution.

Notes that Memories are not shared between devices and they can be erased . So to be on the safe side, make sure so make each memory a favorite. This is in the property pane of the Memory

Alternative with the older slideshow

Go to the Photos tab of you iPad and it will show things by date. There is a select button at the top and it looks like when you choose select you have to a manually select everything but there’s a trick

Look at the first photo of the group and at the lower left you will see Select All and this will pick all the photos for that time.

Now go to the share button and click slideshow. I don’t actually like the default which is magazine and has too many small photos. Also Ken Burns does not work on 4:3 photos. It doesn’t zoom them in or out. The best seems to be Dissolve. Also the music is kind of horrible. And you can’t put a title on it. So less flexible than Memories but maybe a little faster.

When the trip is over do you and a trip video?

Ok now you are back in internet range and have a multi day trip. Normally if it is just a few days I will just upload each days video. It’s too much trouble to do a full edit.

But if you want a produce one then startup up imovies and then you can select photos. The interface is pretty convenient. Imovies understands moments. So when you create a project then you select movie it shows you in reverse timeline and you can select as desired. Note that iMovie needs and internet connection so you can do this remotely.

This application gives you full Control and you can create things to your hearts content.

Create a shared album

Apple still doesn’t let you reorder things in a shared album so the main this is to be very careful about how you order things. I like to put My videos in first.

So first create a new shared album and I like to put the date and month first because Apple has no way to sort shared albums. Or to search.

Then add all your iPhone friends to it. I usually select allow them to post.

Now go to For You and then go to each memory and go to the video and choose share button and then Add to Shared Album.

Sync will often fail

One issue is that the sync upload can fail. So do this slowly. After each share go back to the shared album and make sure it is loaded. Wait if you have to. I’ve had this hang and fall many times.

Finally you can go to Photos and then hit select. And then go to the first day and choose select all. Then Share button and the Add to Shared Album. Then go to the album and wait for the upload to happen.

Be patient because if you are not the shared album gets completely jumbled and can even hang.

I’m Rich & Co.

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