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Videos Filling Up My iCloud

My iPad is holding the Christmas videos I took and I want to edit them on my iPad. Holding them there is preventing me from doing a Cloud backup because it exceeds the total of my storage. Why are videos backing up to the cloud and how can I prevent this from happening? Is my Mac, running Mountain Lion, contributing iPhoto pictures to the cloud when I upload to it from cameras, or is a repository only for my iPhone and iPad via the cloud. I recognize these Photo Stream pictures are poorer quality than those directly off the memory card. Help, this is quite confusing!?
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Chris

Comments: 8 Responses to “Videos Filling Up My iCloud”

    11 years ago

    Your iCloud storage space is used for a few things. One of them is for backups, which include pictures in your "Camera Roll" on both your iPhone and iPad (or any iOS device that is using iCloud backup).
    If you have several large videos stored in your Camera Roll, then that would account for the problem.
    The Camera Roll is the part of your Photos library that was created on your device -- usually by taking pictures or video using the camera on that device. Typically you would take some pictures, then sync with your Mac and transfer them to iPhoto, deleting them from your device after the sync. Then, you can sync photos (recents and albums) back to your device with iPhoto too -- for viewing. This is NOT part of the Camera Roll, and shows up as your Photo Library in the Photos app.
    So one thing you can do is to get those video off of your iPad or iPhone by bringing them into iPhoto. You should do that anyway so you can add them into your collection. But you can leave them on your iPad if you want, especially if you want to edit them there.
    So the problem becomes that you have too much video content to use iCloud backup.
    That's OK. You'll need to ask yourself: why are you using iCloud backup anyway? iCloud backup is great for someone that has an iPhone or iPad but doesn't have a computer. Or, for someone that travels on business all the time and is rarely near their computer.
    Otherwise, you should be simply backing up to your Mac, not iCloud. Then you don't have to worry about the limit on iCloud storage. You also don't need to transfer all of that data over the Internet to Apple's servers -- a problem if you have bandwidth limits on your home network.
    So my advice would be to switch to backing up to your Mac as you probably did before iCloud.

      Chris...
      11 years ago

      This is helpful, but can this be accomplished and still make Streaming useful between devices. When I go to switch Streaming on or off on my Mac or devices, I don't really understand what I've done in the overall scheme of things. Rolling dice comes to mind. The advice to backup my videos to the Mac and return them to the iPad and thus removing them from the Camera roll solves that problem beautifully--thank you--I'm just still confused about the settings that would still accomplish streaming

        11 years ago

        Not sure what you mean by "streaming" -- what setting are you talking about, exactly? Where, and what it is called exactly?

          Chris...
          11 years ago

          Sorry, ran out of words--Should I turn streaming off on the iMac (setting in preferences in iPhoto) and should I turn streaming off on the iPad? Or should I leave them alone and when confronted with the iCloud space warnings when I charge the devices, do the housekeeping necessary? You've gotta admit that when a person sits and thinks about this...it gets complicated.

            11 years ago

            Still not getting you. There is no "Streaming" option in iPhoto. I'm not sure what it would be if there was.
            Perhaps you mean "Photo Stream?"
            If that it what you mean, then it is up to you. Photo Stream is a nice feature. If you want it, then use it. But if not, then don't use it.

    Chris...
    11 years ago

    Does turning this feature off affect the Cloud Storage? It uses the Cloud (it says so) to provide this feature. See where I'm headed with this?

      11 years ago

      Right. It uses iCloud storage space, yes. If you are not using Photo Stream for anything, then you can turn it off to save space. If you are using Photo Stream, then you have to weigh its usefulness vs. the space it uses and decide whether you want to keep using it.

        Mark
        11 years ago

        From support.apple.com/kb/HT4486:

        Photos uploaded to My Photo Stream or Shared Photo Streams do not count against your iCloud storage.

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