Re: Support for .HEIC and .MOV files as "images"

mcopp0315 · 11-25-2020 08:22 AM

I have a relatively simple app to collect client data and ask them to upload images. On my end, we are viewing these submissions in a dashboard

It has been discovered that about one in 10 clients are uploading the requested images/photos as .HEIC files and .MOV files.

When viewing my dashboard with this column as “file”, the MOV files allow me to download the file and preview it. This is acceptable, yet undesirable as now all the proper photos and image files won’t preview

The HEIC files seem to be completely inaccessible

As there is no “universal” column type for all media files, how would you suggest working around this?

I could probably specify in the form one place for photos and one place for videos… But what to do about these HEIC files?

Thanks in advance for any insight!

WillowMobileSys

Unfortunately, AppSheet does not yet support the .HEIC files and actually it is not yet widely supported at all.

The good news is that there should be a Camera setting on the device to choose between High Efficiency or Most Compatible file formats.

The bad news is that users would need to change the setting on the device to “Most Compatible” when running the app. This means any other photos that user takes will be of the “Compatible” format - unless they switch back and forth. That may not go over well.

It really is more of an annoyance than anything else. The .HEIC file format allows for nearly twice as many photos to be stored. Not using it simply means the heavy photo user will have to offload photos more frequently to free up space.

mcopp0315

Thank you John @WillowMobileSystems !

This does seem to be a significant missing link for AppSheet.

Aside from reaching out to my users on a one-by-one basis asking them to change their phone settings when I see they have uploaded a .HEIC photo , do you have any work arounds or suggestions?

Ultimately this app is going to need to cater to 1000+ users in dozens of countries. I’m starting to get nervous about the scalability

WillowMobileSys

I wouldn’t use the word “significant”. The fact is that not many platforms support .HEIC. So when you try to place any of those files onto social media platforms they won’t go because the platforms don’t support the format yet…well, at least 6 months ago they didn’t. That’s when I switched my setting and haven’t bothered checking since.

Pretty much .HEIC is mostly for personal use until services and vendors catch-up.

Because .HEIC is a file compression format, the files have to go through a converter process to change formats. This is near impossible to try to handle manually for each file - especially at the scale you are expecting. So there really isn’t a workaround.

The way I would handle this is to present a message to each user when they get the app that HEIC is not supported and they need to switch camera settings IF they wish to take photos in the app. You could present this in the onboarding screens.

Maybe others can provide more suggestions.

Scott_Nesbitt

Has this changed in the last 18 months? I think more folks are supporting HEIC now, correct?

Thanks

redball

no. as of December 2023 no support for .HEIC! The idea that the .HEIC format is not supported, when iPhones are so common, is kinda silly. I use Appsheet for a location scouting app, and the first sites don't load, then I remember again to switch to JPEG, year after year. There are so many converters out there for this, why can't one be built into, or a module available in appsheet?