How can I get a video *into* the photo/video gallery on an iPad or iPhone?

Let's start by assuming that I have a perfectly compatible file. (In my use case, I was literally trying to get a video I took on my iPhone, that lives in my iPhone photos/video gallery, onto my iPad, so this isn't about conversions or codecs.)

Now, there are many ways to transfer and watch the the video, but I can't find a single darn way to save it with my other videos and photos:

• If it's short, or I'm willing to clip it, I can email it to myself, but unlike photos, clicking on a video enclosure doesn't allow you to save it to the native app. You can open it in vlc, good reader, etc.
• If it's under 180MB, I can upload it to Dropbox from the source device (iPhone for me) and then access or watch it on the destination device (iPad for me). But I can't save it to photos from Dropbox on the iPad

Why do I care, if I can access it and even watch it as described above? Two reasons:

1. I like having things organized in one place. I don't want to have to remember which vids are in Photos, vs. Dropbox, vs. Good reader, etc.
2. Most apps that use video (including Apple's own iMovie, for frack's sake) can only open and access movies located in the photos app.

Please tell me I'm missing something elegant, if not obvious?

Solution 1:

I'm surprised nobody has answered this correctly.

The solution is to open iTunes, click on your iPhone, go to the Photos tab, then Sync Photos for the folder that contains the photo and video subfolders you want to sync. Each subfolder will then be sync'ed to your iphone UNDERNEATH the Camera Roll as new Albums, and these are treated seperately than the Camera Roll and will always remain synced.

Furthermore, apps that can access the Camera Roll almost always can also access Synced Albums, so this should really work well for you. I keep a whole bunch of old photos and videos on my iPhone at all times using this method and it works great.

As a bonus, unlike the Camera Roll, these Synced Albums don't get backed up in iTunes, so it won't slow down your Backup like a growing Camera Roll will.

Solution 2:

Apparently the only way to get a video into a Photos app on ios 10.{1,2} is to use airdrop. If you import video through the iTunes it will end up in the Videos application.

iMovie and 3rd party video apps can see videos only in the camera roll, the videos (including home videos: the type is not important) in the Videos app can not be accessed by 3rd party apps (for editing or whatever).

Solution 3:

You are missing nothing obvious. Currently, I have to shoot video from a camera that works with the camera connection kit for iPad since that is the only way to get video into the photo roll at present.

The camera connector kit won't work to import video from iPhone to iPad. The SD card reader won't let your iPhone write out video to a card. As you've discovered, no app has the ability to add video to the camera roll other than calling the built in camera to capture it and store it in the roll.

I've looked over the iCloud and iOS5 announcements closely, and even though it looks like video you capture will get backed up to the cloud as part of the nightly wifi application data backups, the Photo Stream demonstration very carefully mentioned Photo all the time and no videos were present in any of the files. I don't know for sure, but it doesn't look like anything is announced to change this in the near future.

I have submitted a bug report against iMovie for iOS and perhaps if enough people do, it might get added. Also, consumer feedback might help too.

I personally don't care if I can use wifi or bluetooth device to device, use the camera connector kit, go through the cloud. I'd just like to be able to edit video on iPad iMovie using footage shot from iPhone without needing to bring a PC and a USB cable for transfer.

Solution 4:

The easiest way is to use an app that allows you to download from the account "Dropbox" and save to camera roll. I use "Downloads Free" by LS apps. It has its own browser. Navigate to your Dropbox account online. Select your video and download it. It gets saved under the files folder. Select your video and select save to photos option. Photos refers to the Camera Roll. Voila.