Lost videos from photo stream

Question

I backed up my iPhone 5 to iCloud before erasing all data and sending it in for repair. Now the phone is back and everything is restored properly using iTunes on my iMac except the videos from my camera roll are missing. How can I recover them? They are not shown in my iPhoto library.

Answer 1

I think what's confusing things here is the difference between backing up your device and photo stream.  When you back up your device, either to iCloud or to your computer using iTunes, it creates a backup file that can later be used to restore your data and settings, including your camera roll photos and videos.  You can't view anything in the backup, you can only restore it to your device to recover your data.  Also, your backup should be considered a permanent backup for your camera roll.  If you delete anything from the camera roll and continue backing up your device, the backup containing the deleted photos/videos will be overwritten by one that doesn't, and they will be lost.
Photo stream, on the other hand, streams photos to your other devices.  These photos are not backed up in iCloud; they only remain in iCloud for 30 days, giving your devices/computers enough time to download them.  They will remain on your devices until you delete them, but they only remain in iCloud for 30 days.  As you've noticed, My Photo Stream does not include videos.  Unlike My Photo Stream, shared streams can include short videos (5 min. or less) and will remain in iCloud indefinitely.  They still shouldn't be considered a backup for several reasons.  Photos in a shared stream are a lower resolution than the originals in the camera roll.  Also, at the present time you can't download videos from a shared stream on an iOS device; you can only stream them.
To back up your camera roll you should either import it to your computer using your usb cable as explained here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4083, or use an alternative cloud service such as Dropbox.