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I can’t save a video from my mobile Dropbox app to my iPhone gallery. Getting a couldn't save error.

I used my computer to upload a mp4 file that I recorded, after uploading it to drop box, I wanted to save it to my IPhone X gallery. I can’t really save it, all I see is “Couldn’t save. Sorry, this type of video cannot be saved to this device” I’m really confused, I tried multiple times but it does not work. Oh and I can watch the video normally on the drop box app. I just can’t save it for some reason. What should I do?

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strigimusic

I found something that worked! I wanted to come on and share my findings. I was having this issue recently and it was driving me bananas. If you're encountering this issue and you're using Adobe Premiere (like me), try exporting HEVC (H.265) instead of H.264, even though H.264 tends to be more compatible, for some reason, the iPhone just really loves the high efficiency codec. I'm not sure if this is a space/storage issue or not (I don't think so because the day before I used a very very long [over 2GB] H.264 video and it worked great) [I have an iPhone 12 Pro Max btw]. I'm starting to surmise that this is an aspect ratio issue. Square videos and 9:16 videos seem to not like H.264 on iPhone as much. I don't have an issue with 1080p though.

All comments

Elixir

Hi @eryxie, are you using the latest version of Dropbox app? I can save .mp4 files by clicking the Share menu → Export file → Save video.

eryxie

Yes. I downloaded the app yesterday just to save the video so I’m pretty sure it’s the latest ver.

Walter

Hey @eryxie - sorry to jump in here, but could you send us a screenshot of the exact error you're getting?

Also, have you made sure that you have enough space on your device to export this file?

Keep us posted!

strigimusic

Hello, I'm copying and pasting a solution I posted recently. I'm leaving it here for you guys to investigate! This was in response to the issue related to the Dropbox app telling us that "can't sync this type of file to this device" warning.

I found something that worked! I wanted to come on and share my findings. I was having this issue recently and it was driving me bananas. If you're encountering this issue and you're using Adobe Premiere (like me), try exporting HEVC (H.265) instead of H.264, even though H.264 tends to be more compatible, for some reason, the iPhone just really loves the high efficiency codec. I'm not sure if this is a space/storage issue or not (I don't think so because the day before I used a very very long [over 2GB] H.264 video and it worked great) [I have an iPhone 12 Pro Max btw]. I'm starting to surmise that this is an aspect ratio issue. Square videos and 9:16 videos seem to not like H.264 on iPhone as much. I don't have an issue with 1080p though.

primalzombie

Thank you for this solution. Its very odd that the iphone 12 pro can record in H.264 with 4k settings but is incompatible with receiving an external file with the same settings.