Was all excited about finally having a family photo and video sharing solution with Plex. I don’t plan to put RAW files in Plex as those are really my negatives, especially in using a larger format camera. BUT, the iPhone shoots DNG raw files now and they are VERY convenient because you can really fix exposure and color issues that are just not possible with out of phone jpegs. So given that Plex claims RAW support regardless, how is it that it doesn’t support the very open format of DNG given that iOS devices are able to shoot these? I’d rather not have to convert all my iPhone photos to jpeg before importing into Plex. Can’t believe I am the only one who wants this. Is this a bug or is ‘Supports RAW’ just not true?
So is a DNG not a DNG? I’m specifically talking about the DNG files that an iPhone with iOS 10 generates when shooting RAW. Can someone from the Plex team or who has an iPhone with these files comment here? With millions of iPhones now shooting RAW and Camera Upload in Plex, NOT having support for the native RAW file format seems crazy.
Thanks.
The server does not care where a DNG comes from.
Are you specifically talking about Camera upload not sending them to server? What app are you using to take the pic. everything i have seen online says the stock app does not. if you are using another app is it saving to default camera roll?
BigWheel,
Let me be clear. The issue is NOT getting iPhone DNG files to the Plex server. They are on the server. The issue is that unlike the iPhone jpegs, the DNGs are nothing but black squares. I have DNGs from both an iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and all of them are black. See the attached two images showing what I see and the Get Info panel from one of the black images. Bottomline: Plex is not displaying these files. Should be easy to replicate on your end but I’m happy to provide samples if needed. I can’t really move to Plex for our family photo library if it can display these photos. Others seem to be able to display DNG files from other cameras, so maybe you need to look at the ones from iOS specifically? Thanks for your help and your reply.
if you don’t mind sending a file I can make a bug report with it included.
@BigWheel Yes. I can provide one of the iPhone dng files shown above. I’ll upload it here this evening. How will I be able to keep current on the status of this issue? It’s a blocker for me to move my photo library to Plex and I had planned to do that in the next several days. Thank you.
I’m sorry we do not provide a public issue tracker. I cannot make promises about support for DNG ( or any type of ) files which could have custom properties I have never seen. If it can be done it will not likely happen in the next few days unless the devs determine it is a very trivial fix.
@BigWheel Given that you guys claim DNG file support, and you already do support it in some way for some cameras as is evidenced by others who have posted here, I would think that it should be fairly trivial to adjust whatever codec support you do have to decode Apple’s implementation of DNG.
I’ve attached two of the iPhone DNGs in a .zip file. Too bad on the public issue tracking. I need to get my family photo library published in some way and Plex was the leading option. I’ll wait for a few weeks to see if there is PMS update with this fix, and if not, I guess I’ll go the Google Photos route which was my backup.
On a related note: seems weird that Plex Web lets me download photos contained in the Photos library but the Mac app, Plex Media Player, does not.
Thanks for. your help.
/m
Any updates on this now that we’ve been over a year of DNG support on iOS? Last I checked this STILL wasn’t working. What about the new HEIF file format support in iOS 11?
sorry i do not have any new information.
The server does not support HEIF files.
So this is great. Apple has a new photo file format that saves space for compressed JPEGS, AND they have a mobile RAW format that is Adobe DNG. Neither of these are supported by Plex for it’s photo library where mobile photos take on iPhone 8 or X, or with iOS 11, are often the default formats. So if I’ve switched to using Plex for my mobile photo library, as Plex surely wants me to do, what the heck are we supposed to do here? I mean it’s not like these formats aren’t well understood by now. And Plex even says it supports DNG in the marketing materials for PPL. It is these rough edges and core functionality that goes unaddressed, while new things like ‘News’ are developed, that makes one question keeping a Plex Pass. Maybe Plex should make these limitations more clear when convincing users to buy into expanded use? Combined with the fact that my family’s Apple TV use for streaming Plex movies from our library is totally broken (“transcoder Failed”) and that we can’t review most of our most recent vacation photos, I have to question my Plex advocacy to my family and friends. I have been an avid support since WAY back before ‘Alexandria’, but a family revolt is brewing.
Just an update on this guys.
DNGs from iOS devices are supposed to work and I have downloaded some sample images from the web which do indeed work fine. I have also tested the images posted earlier (thank you @mrwiggles) and seen that those specific ones don’t work.
The issue lies with the image library we’re using (FreeImage) which we are planning to bump to a newer version soon which should hopefully improve RAW support across the board. I can’t exactly say when this update will come but we are aware of these issues and will try and get these resolved as soon as possible.
