I’m a Plex Pass holder. can’t I download home video content from my server to an iOS device. Works fine for Images and Hollywood movies. All home movies play just fine. The download button is disabled on these items. Why is this? I have tried various settings to use cellular and am on or off WiFi. In all cases, the download button is never available. The use case is…I have an older home video on my server that I want to return to my camera roll for local use on my iPad or iPhone.
Would you mind sharing some (technical) details of those home videos? – e.g. the Show Information details from Plex Web
I’ve just double-checked on my server and iPad and it worked fine for me synching from both ends (requesting sync from iOS, pushing sync from Plex Web).
ISure Tom. I’ll get some screenshots in a few minutes. For now, a bit more detail…
I have never been able to download a home video to an iOS device from plex server. I’m currently in plex iOS 5.6.2 and my server is a beefy Ubuntu modern metal server with current server plex bits. All home video is either taken from an iOS device or from a Canon D3400 SLR. And none of it can be downloaded from the iOS device.
All of this home video is pushed to my server via my iOS family devices using the sync feature. I am the plex admin and a skilled Unix admin and am certain file permissions are constructed appropriately for my content.
However, I can certainly push one of these home videos from my server using the web app on a laptop to a given iOS device using the sync feature going that direction. This has always worked fine.
But I sure wish I could, from the iOS device, download a home video from my server to my camera roll. None of my iOS devices allow this.
Again, the download button is disabled on the iOS device in all cases where there is a home video.
And again, I can do these things because the download button is not disabled.
—-I can download images on my server from the iOS device.
—-I can download a Hollywood movie on my server from the iOS device.
—-I can download a song on my server from the iOS device.
Tom or other moderators, any idea what I’m doing wrong if everyone else is able to do this?
Is there anyone else listening here that’s in my camp?
At first look there seems to be nothing particularly funny/special/wrong about your video.
Can you check if Plex acts any different if you add one of your regular movie files to the home video library and try to sync it? (e.g. copying one of the files you successfully synced earlier – trying to rule out that this is about the files themselves)
Good point Tom! I think you’re into something I did not mention. Is this my problem?
I use a single library type called ‘Photos’ to house all of my still images and home videos which includes the sole location my iPhone and my family iPhones use to sync to (we each have a directory in the file system behind this library for this use). See screenshot below. I do this because we like to use the timeline view to pluck content from a specific time range. If I had a separate library of type ‘Other Videos’ I would have to find stills first in one library and then goto a different library to get the home videos from that time range. We have digital content back to 1997.
For music, I use the Music library type.
For Hollywood movies, I use the Movies library type.
in that case… let’s try moving the home vide from earlier into an own Other Videos library (just for testing purposes) and see if it’ll allow you to be downloaded/synced from there.
Here is what happens.
- Using a laptop, goto my server on the web app.
- create a new library of type ‘other videos’ and map it to a new dir.
- add two MOV videos captured recently from an iPhone, a 30MB file and a 170MB file.
- Do not sync this folder to my iPhone.
- Start the plex app on my iPhone.
- Navigate to the new library.
- I can play the two movies on the iPhone from the server.
- I can use the down arrow download button to make the video available through plex offline.
- In settings in plex app on iPhone, go into offline browsing mode.
- I confirm the movie is offline local in my app’s cache.
- But there is no means to save the movie to my camera roll on the iPhone or otherwise get it exported so I can share it outside of plex.
This differs from the photos library type which supports downloading the still photo to the camera roll, email, text, or other built-in methods to export the item. I realize a large video file is too large to push through text, email, etc. but when storage is not a problem on my iPhone, I want to add a video back to my camera roll.
The problem evolves when you take this into account…To use the camera upload feature, which I adore, it points to a single directory on the disk. If a ‘other videos’ library type is chosen, I’m unable to get a video downloaded to the camera roll but I can at least make it offline through the plex app. If a ‘photos’ library type is chosen, I still can’t get a video to the camera roll nor can I make it available offline through the plex app.
I can push this home video to my iPhone from the server using the sync but I’m in the same boat as noted above - the item is available offline, but only through plex.
What’s the best practice to get a home video on my server to my camera roll? I don’t see a method.
Thx for reading and helping me ;). I love this product and the community.
You can’t with Plex, I don’t think. You would use iCloud for this instead I believe.
Edited to add:
Get photos from your computer to your iOS device
You can choose among several options for transferring photos and videos from your computer to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch:
- Use iCloud Photos with Photos for macOS or iCloud for Windows to keep your photos safely stored and up-to-date on all your devices.
- Use AirDrop to wirelessly send photos and videos from your Mac to your iOS device. This is a quick and easy Mac-only option for sending a few items. When you send photos and videos to an iOS device via AirDrop, they appear in the device’s Photos app.
- Sync your photos manually with iTunes. Each time that you sync your iOS device with iTunes, the photos and videos on your iOS device update to match the albums on your computer.
From the bottom of the page at: Transfer photos and videos from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac or PC - Apple Support
Nice try. But I’m not paying for iCloud or Dropbox’s extended storage plans which is per iOS device. 
Well you’re probably not going to do it with Plex either so it seems like you’re not going to do it at all.
i never noticed this myself. on the video screen on the top right i am guessing you mean which is a “share” then you select “save image” only works for photos. it does not work for video. for video you need to hold down in grid then sync, but a sync won’t put in the camera roll.
I believe it is not there for video incase it is a video you manually added from someplace like a camcorder that the iOS device can’t play.
I apologize for jack ■■■■ comment. I can certainly get the video item to the phone. Just looking for an all in one media server option.
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Bigwheel, that does make sense. Could it detect that the item is a .mov or .mp4 file by extension and assume it’s compatible?
Possibly. I will make a report about it to see if they can detect a video that should be able to play.
(I don’t make any promises)
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I, too, would appreciate the functionality of being able to save synced videos from the Plex app to my camera roll using my iPad. I record 4K video using a full frame camera and save it to my Synology NAS which is running Plex. Unfortunately, Synology’s own Photo Station app does not support transcoding 4K or saving it to the camera roll, so like other users, I end up having to use Handbrake and iCloud to get it to my iPad which is frustrating and time consuming. If Plex got this working, I’d likely ditch DS Photo altogether.
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Edit: Now that a few of my videos are available I see the problem. The share sheet is not even available in Plex. So my suggested solition does not work.
Since I am just setting up my Plex server for photos right now I do not yet know whether the following workaround will help.
It did work for me on another app which did not let me save videos to the camera roll.
I have Apples Shortcut app installed on my iPhone. This allows you to execute some custom actions from the share sheet. So I created a shortcut with just one single action „save to photo album“ (I can‘t tell whether this is the correct english name for the action since I am from germany) and made it available for the share sheet. Now with a video selected I open the share sheet, choose the „shortcut“ option and in the following menu select my own shortcut. It worked for me (with the synology ds file app however…)
Create this action
Use this settings
Open the share sheet and select shortcuts
Select the shortcut you created
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