Photos, Live Photos and HDR
Photos and videos share one cut. A selected still gets a gentle zoom and pan; a video plays the interval the cut chose. You can remove either or swap it during review.
Ken Burns, and where the pan lands
The pan moves toward the largest face Immich recognised, or toward the centre when there is none. Rendering does not run another face detector.
If you crop, rotate or mirror a photo in Immich's own editor, the film uses that edited version, not the untouched original. An edited HDR photo comes out in SDR: Immich's editor does not carry the gain map over. Selection judges the edited version too, so a crop that cut someone out is read without them. Videos and Live Photos always play from their original: Immich's editor doesn't touch them.
Clips keep their whole frame. For a landscape clip in a portrait film, choose Blurred background or Fit with bars under Scaling Mode. Neither crops your subject.
To make a video-only film, untick Include photos under Length and pictures, pass --no-photos on the CLI, or set photos.enabled: false in YAML.
Live Photos
A Live Photo enters the cut as one photograph. If its video shows useful motion, it plays as motion; if not, the still stays. Nearby Live Photos can be stitched into a longer clip. The app verifies selected motion companions before sealing the cut: a malformed video keeps the photograph as a still, while unavailable sources or tools stop the check.
Three overlapping Live Photos can become this continuous 4.5-second shot:
Six Live Photos at a bike race become 8.1 seconds:
These examples are the author's own footage, published with permission.
Untick Include Live Photos, pass --no-live-photos, or set advanced.analysis.include_live_photos: false to use the stills only. A person-filtered film does not add untagged pictures just to extend a burst.
HDR, end to end
HDR preservation depends on the source and encoding hardware. On the Basic tier, Live Photo merges are limited to 1080p. On that tier, a device with hardware H.264 but no hardware HEVC tone-maps HDR photos and companions to SDR during preparation.
Use hardware encoding to check what your machine supports. The media processing reference covers frame verification, audio alignment, supported devices, HDR formats and gain maps.