Forum Discussion
How to get Living Images to "play" again in PHOTOS with Windows 11 AND W10?
(Referred from Answers after no solution was found there.)
How to get Living Images to "play" in the PHOTOS app with Windows 11 AND W10, the way they used to?
PHOTOS has stopped "playing" "Living Images" that PHOTOS itself created: "... _MOMENT.jpg " files.
PHOTOS now opens a Living Image file to only the STILL picture instead of the 1-second Living-Image.
The files themselves have NOT been altered since before this problem. They were all created from the Windows PHOTOS app which added " _MOMENT " to the file name. And they all worked fine before. The living.mp4 files are still in all the JPG files (Zips) and still work if extracted.
- Also proving that it's NOT the files, PHOTOS behavior was different on two different PCs using the SAME exact physical files (not copies) via the network. The same Living-Image JPG "_Moment" files did not "play" when opened with PHOTOS on that host, but the same file on the host did "play" correctly when accessed from a separate network PC. Then the network PC got a MS update and the problem then started from it too.
- There does not appear to be a file option to "open as living image" or "open as a still image". So, it's NOT the files. And this problem applies to ALL Living-Image JPG files on either PC.
This problem first cropped up in August 2021 on both PCs after Windows updates.
The problem is clearly some setting or function in or for Windows or MS PHOTOS that was changed by an MS update.
I did reset PHOTOS. And installed all Windows 10 updates.
Then I was hoping that the upgrade to Windows 11 would fix it, but it has not.
Two different PCs. Two different graphics cards. Both encountered the problem in August 2021. Each changed behavior at different times a couple weeks apart.
Background on the equipment:
The host PC has NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 (4 GB GDDR5 dedicated) Last drivers update was July 2021 -well before this problem. All installed with no problems. W11 installed in late November 2021.
The network PC is MS Surface Pro 3. Last drivers update available was 2019 and installed. Still on W10.
I have now done a complete RESET on both PCs and PHOTOS still does not "play" the living image "MOMENT' files.
Each file is still complete with the embedded "living.mp4".
Could there be some setting in the NTFS file system or in Windows Explorer that is interfering with a "live open"?
I have discovered that the LIVING IMAGE functionality is still in PHOTOS.
But you have to launch PHOTOS and add the directory to your Collection, then open the MOMENT photo from within PHOTOS.
You can't however open the picture from File Explorer with PHOTOS and get the LIVING IMAGE result.
It should be a simple switch to turn that functionality back on, but MS took it away with no explanation or fix.
