P: Sound lost when downloading video from web (on iPhone)

[Fredrik266205518dxt]

Hello, I have a Lightroom album which I share with a number of other people. It contains both stills and videos. I have enabled for guests to download content. I have shared a link by generating it in my Lightroom application on my Mac. When the guests follow that link, they get taken to the web interface of Lightroom. I have been informed that when they download video, the sound disappears. This seems to happen consistently for iOS users but apparently works for Android users.

It sounds to me, but I am no expert, that there could be a codec issue on the device.

Worth noting is that if I download video from the iPhone Lightroom app to my physical phone, there is no issue with the sound, but if I download from the web browser on the phone, I get the same issue.

This is rather disturbing as I don't want to have to force all the guests in the album to insall the iOS Lightroom app to make it work.

Any suggestions or solutions?

[Charlie.D]

Hello @Fredrik266205518dxt 

Thanks for reaching out to us!

I don't doubt that you were able to reproduce the problem, but with my own videos and iPhone, I cannot yet reproduce the problem and need more info from you. 

Let me jot down some notes: Whether I play the video in iOS Safari or fully download it to Files.app, I get audio.  And I tried as a member of an album, checking a video uploaded by the album owner just now and also a video uploaded one year ago.  The source videos were from an iPhone camera.

My device: iPhone 15 on iOS 17.6.1

Would it be possible for you to send me a private message with a link to an album that has one of the videos that plays with no sound?  Click on my user name to send me a private message.  The album can be a new one which includes only one example video (so you don't have to share more than you wish).  If you can set the album to Allow Downloads that'd be great.  I'm hoping that by looking at the data for the video that we'll figure out what's wrong.

[Charlie.D]

Hello again @Fredrik266205518dxt 

Our developers are still working on a solution.  It took time to figure out the device settings required to reproduce this.  The problem does not occur with Sony A7IV 4K video, for example: XAVC S 4K, 60P, 200M 4:2:2 10-bit 

The problem was ultimately reproduced with 1080P video recorded as XAVC S HD, 60P, 25M 4:2:0 8-bit

Until a fix is ready on our end, two work-arounds I can recommend:
- record using alternate camera settings, like the 4K setting I mentioned above, or

- use a video encoder app like QuickTime to export a new version of the video.  I was able to confirm this approach will allow downloaded videos from LR Web to preserve audio playback on otherwise problematic Sony A7IV video

[Charlie.D]

BTW, I'm converting this post to a bug since the issue was reproduced in-house.  This will help with issue tracking.

[Fredrik266205518dxt]

Thank you so much! Will try to change settings on the camera until further notice.

[Fredrik266205518dxt]

Hello again, Charlie. Unfortunately, I have to add another issue as a consequence of the initial one. I now tried shooting video in 4K (XAVC-S, 100M 4:2:2 10 bit) and now Lightroom (version 7.5 running on Mac OS Sonoma 14.6.1) wont upload to Lightroom at all... When I connect the camera and browse for content, I can see and import the thumbnails from the video I just shot, but the clips themselves are just greyed out. I tried to import them into iMovie - no problem.

[Fredrik266205518dxt]

Correction... I just noticed that the clips imported to iMovie are just black. I get the sound but no video. There must be something related to the video format that isn't just isolated to Lightroom but also iMovie.

[Fredrik266205518dxt]

Did even more digging. There seems to be two problems here. One is Apple related. It seems that (despite installing a pack that is supposed to give support for advanced codecs), the Mac simply won't import the 4K 10bit videos correctly. The other problem seems to be Adobe related. I also installed Lightroom on my PC and tried importing the same video. It won't work. However, if I import it via the browser interface, it works. Is there any plan to support this video format also when importing via the app? Preferably on Mac, but that may still be prevented by the first issue...

[Charlie.D]

Hi @Fredrik266205518dxt 

Let's create separate threads for separate issues -- otherwise it's hard for the multiple Lightroom teams to track priorities.  Can you please create a new thread if LR Desktop can't import your video.  FWIW, I imported 4K 10-bit via LR Web (lightroom.adobe.com) so if there's a bug, it sounds like a desktop bug.

Please note the same recording settings, and any significant details (like you did here already)

Edit: I just saw your subsequent post, about Mac OS.  Can you please also share what Sony A7IV firmware you are running?  I am curious since Mac OS 14.6.1 had no issue with the video sample I tried.

[Charlie.D]

Hi again @Fredrik266205518dxt 

I am attempting to reply to separate posts from you in this thread, but it seems the forums UI isn't working the way I hoped.

Another work-around:  If you rename the exported videos that were captured with your original 1080P settings from .MP4 to .MOV, that could help the videos playback OK with native video players on each major OS.

A developer who is looking into this problem noted that the exported videos are saved as MP4, but the audio channel remains as uncompressed audio which is something more common to .MOV videos.  We are still working on a solution, so you and your share recipients don't need to use such workaround.  But I wanted to mention that renaming exports from .MP4 to .MOV with your video type does play the sound again for me!  Maybe this is helpful for any current videos you have uploaded.

[Fredrik266205518dxt]

Thank you so much! I have also been able to import via the web interface, so agree. It looks like a desktop bug and only limited to MacOS since I was able to do it on my Windows PC application. I will create a separate thread for that issue, so on this one, we stay focused on the disappearing sound.

[Fredrik266205518dxt]

I forgot to mention, I am running firmware 2.00 on my Sony A7iv. I am holding off with updating to 3.02 as a lot of bugs have been reported with that update from some users.