# Save Metadata Oddities



## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

Okay, so I have Lightroom set to not automatically write changes back to XMP/DNG. As I go through my workflow (import, cull, add metadata, etc.) I end with CMD-S to save metadata back to my DNG files. Everything seems to work (progress bar moves from left to right and then goes away), but when I scroll through my thumbnails, I see that some images still show a metadata changed badge and the metadata status in the metadata browser on the right hand side of the screen shows that there is unsaved metadata.

To make things more confusing, some of these images show a down-arrow-like badge and some show a thunderbolt-like badge, and these images show either "has been changed" or "..." in the metadata status field, respectively.

Very odd, very frustrating, and I can't make it stop behaving this way. Selecting all images and hitting CMD-S doesn't make any difference. Selecting one afflicted image and hitting CMD-S might work, or I might have to hit CMD-S twice to make the status reflect no changed metadata (both the badge and the text indicators).

All changes are within Lightroom and are not as a result of edits external to Lightroom.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

Update: It appears that if I use the up/down arrows to move from thumbnail to thumbnail that the status is somehow altered. In other words, if the highlighted thumbnail is at the bottom edge of the thumbnail window, and I hit the down arrow, the next thumbnail to appear below is guaranteed to have either the down-arrow-like badge or the thunderbolt-like badge appear. I hit CMD-S (usually have to hit it twice) and the status finally shows no changes in metadata.

Argh...


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

Okay, well I figured out what the "..." and thunderbolt-like badge mean: reading/writing metadata. But, once that is done, the badge changes to a down-arrow-like badge, and the status reads "has been changed." I have saved metadata over and over, and it doesn't seem to matter. This happens with newly imported images from yesterday and with old images imported months or years ago.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

I may have fixed my issue. It seems, after spending the better part of my late evening working through this problem, that I have stumbled across a very bad anomaly within Lightroom.

I have 2'75 RAW images in my Lightroom database which results in several dozen "pages" of thumbnails based on the size of the thumbnails that I have set. I selected all of the thumbnails using CMD-A. I then set the color label of all thumbnails to purple (which I have titled "temp"). I saw on the first "page" of thumbnails that the thunderbolt-like badge appeared, and after a few seconds, it was replaced with the down-arrow-like badge. Fine. That was expected. What wasn't expected was what I found when I hit PAGE-DOWN. The next "page" of thumbnails showed the thunderbolt-like badge, and as before, after a few seconds it was replaced with the down-arrow-like badge.

Huh? So I hit the PAGE-DOWN key again. Same thing. Again. Same thing. Again. Same thing...

Lightroom will not update the status of the thumbnails unless they are visible on screen. This is a huge issue as I see it. As a result, I have had to PAGE-DOWN and PAGE-UP through my thumbnails several times to ensure that all thumbnails show the proper status that the metadata changed. Then I used CMD-S to save the data, but I once again had to use PAGE-DOWN (or PAGE-UP) to show each and every thumbnail on screen before any changes to the metadata were registered.

This is a disaster, because now I am not certain that metadata changes are registered to the thumbnails (and subsequently to the DNG files when saved) without first looking at each and every thumbnail to ensure the badges are displaying correctly. I am convinced that this bizarre behavior is what led to the random thumbnail not actually saving the changes to metadata, and may even have something to do with the metadata browser not updating properly to show recent changes to files.

Comments? Questions?


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

Oh, and this issue also applies to other changes, such as when changing the white balance setting. Part of my workflow is to set the white balance of newly imported images. I use CMD-A to select all thumbnails, and then apply a white balance setting. Unfortunately, I have to PAGE-DOWN to each and every thumbnail to make sure the change is actually applied.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

Nope. Never mind. While this issue I described above does exist, my eye-popping and exhausting work to correct the metadata issues has been in vain. I just checked some random thumbnails, and they show that metadata has been changed, even though I inspected each and every thumbnail and saved using CMD-S several times. I even optimized the database several times.

Nothing is working to correct this issue. I'm tired, frustrated, and ready to call it quits. I feel like I can't trust that Lightroom is doing its job saving metadata and image processing steps as a result of all of this.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

Now I'm beginning to wonder if I literally have to select each and every thumbnail and wait for the metadata status to update (which takes roughly five seconds). Holy cow... at that rate, I will be sitting at my computer begging Lightroom to work properly for almost three hours.

Three hours of clicking the right arrow key 2'75 times really does not appeal to me at all.

Somebody please have a solution for this nightmare. :shock:


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## jslabovitz (Feb 16, 2008)

I've noticed something similar.

I don't shoot digital, but film, and so the capture time of the imported scan files are the date the negative was scanned, not when the shot was actually captured.  So after scanning, I will select a bunch of images and change the capture time (Metadata > Edit Capture Time).  Fairly regularly, the capture time does not get saved. Sometimes, a totally bogus time is saved instead!

I've noticed that, in general, metadata settings lag behind the displayed information.

Hope this helps, or least makes you feel more sane!


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## Kiwigeoff (Feb 16, 2008)

Ian Farlow;8''9 said:
			
		

> Now I'm beginning to wonder if I literally have to select each and every thumbnail and wait for the metadata status to update (which takes roughly five seconds). Holy cow... at that rate, I will be sitting at my computer begging Lightroom to work properly for almost three hours.
> 
> Three hours of clicking the right arrow key 2'75 times really does not appeal to me at all.
> 
> Somebody please have a solution for this nightmare. :shock:


Have you thought about using the autowrite, that's what I use with no issues seed or otherwise.


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 16, 2008)

Ian, you've been talking to yourself for hours!  Go put your feet up and have a beer or something!

I've come across problems with XMP writing in Leopard that I never had in Tiger, so something's definitely different.  There's an easy solution though.  Delete the xmp's and then write fresh ones.  Works a treat.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

These are DNGs, so no way to delete the metadata and re-write that I know of. There are no sidecar files to delete, either.


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 16, 2008)

Doh!  Well there's another reason to stick with standard raw files and sidecars then I guess!!!


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

Victoria Bampton;8'32 said:
			
		

> Doh!  Well there's another reason to stick with standard raw files and sidecars then I guess!!!



Ouch. That hurts!


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## Braders (Feb 17, 2008)

Ian

I have also been following your lonely journey, trying to relate it to some of the issues that are really similar to a few i too have experienced.

I have seen and followed almost identical posts on the adobe user to user forum, and i remember it goes back to LR1.1...now i just need to find them for ya....some more relevant than others...

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c'6'''4/'
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3c'5e'52/'
http://www.adobeforums.com/[email protected]@.3c'581ca
http://www.adobeforums.com/[email protected]@.3c'562e3
http://adobeforums.com/webx/.3c'55ef'/2
http://www.adobeforums.com/[email protected]@.3c'52c4d
http://www.adobeforums.com/[email protected]@.3bc356b4

Also, from here
http://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/showthread.php?t=679

When i can find the post i made that was so similar i will remember the fix..!


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

Thanks. Yeah, it's been a lonely journey, that's for sure. I still look forward to 1.4 or 2.', whichever comes first. There's still so much to like about Lightroom.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

Is there anyone else out there in Lightroom land that can at least confirm that what I am experiencing is also happening to them? There may not be a fix, but if there are multiple people with this issue, then maybe there will be a fix.

Just want someone to give me a hug...


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 18, 2008)

I can provide the hug Ian, but no problem here, sorry!


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

I'm considering starting over with Lightroom to see if anything fixes the problem. What are your steps for editing, and then saving, metadata in your images? Do you edit in batches, one at a time, or some other way?

Oh, and I'll be on a plane ASAP for that hug. Just have the Nestle Smarties and Cadbury Flake ready for me when I get there! Man... love those things.


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 18, 2008)

Ooooooh, I haven't had smarties in a long time.  Far too many colourings, you'll have me bouncing off the walls!  

My steps - I personally get to the end of an editing session, select all, hit cmd-s and... well... that's it!


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 18, 2008)

Ian, I've just had a brainwave.  Just try something for me....

Select the files, and hit one of the quick develop buttons.  Now hit cmd-s and it'll force it to rewrite the xmp.  Now hit the opposite QD button and cmd-s it again.

The thing that's just brought up this brainwave... I wrote to xmp, and then accidentally deleted them (don't ask! ).  Then I tried to write to xmp again, but it didn't think it needed to, so it looked like it wrote to xmp but never created new xmp files.  Nothing I did changed that, until I hit QD to physically give it something to update.  Syncing a movement on a slider that you don't use would do the same.  Then saving that created new xmp's, reversing the QD adjustment set the images back to normal, and then save worked correctly.  Just a thought!


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Ooooooh, I haven't had smarties in a long time.  Far too many colourings, you'll have me bouncing off the walls!
> 
> My steps - I personally get to the end of an editing session, select all, hit cmd-s and... well... that's it!



That's what I had been doing as well. Odd... Something seems to have gone all wonky somewhere.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Ian, I've just had a brainwave.  Just try something for me....
> 
> Select the files, and hit one of the quick develop buttons.  Now hit cmd-s and it'll force it to rewrite the xmp.  Now hit the opposite QD button and cmd-s it again.
> 
> The thing that's just brought up this brainwave... I wrote to xmp, and then accidentally deleted them (don't ask! ).  Then I tried to write to xmp again, but it didn't think it needed to, so it looked like it wrote to xmp but never created new xmp files.  Nothing I did changed that, until I hit QD to physically give it something to update.  Syncing a movement on a slider that you don't use would do the same.  Then saving that created new xmp's, reversing the QD adjustment set the images back to normal, and then save worked correctly.  Just a thought!



I had the same thought, but I changed the color label from one to another, saved, and then changed the label back and saved. Nothing helped.


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## Braders (Feb 18, 2008)

Ian 

I have experienced this and the following worked.

Change the "auto write XMP" to manual. Then, try to change some of the metadata like the location or copyright info, then change it back to want it should be and then save metadata.

also as an aside, as i don't auto write xmp changes, it would be nice to be able to filter out the files that have had metadata changes away from the remainder of the files. As it is now i just do what Victoria does, by selecting all.

Love smarties...


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## Kiwigeoff (Feb 18, 2008)

Braders;82'7 said:
			
		

> Ian
> 
> I have experienced this and the following worked.
> 
> ...



I think if select all and cmd-s is applied only those files that have changed data will get written to, so sorting wouldn't matter?

Try a Crunchie Bar!!


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

Braders;82'7 said:
			
		

> Ian
> 
> I have experienced this and the following worked.
> 
> ...



Thanks. I'll try this and see what happens. I may end up starting over, but that's okay. Starting fresh helps me learn more about Lightroom anyway, even though it means long nights. Plus, starting fresh gives me an opportunity to drop some bad habits that I might have developed (no pun intended).


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 16, 2008)

Okay, so I have Lightroom set to not automatically write changes back to XMP/DNG. As I go through my workflow (import, cull, add metadata, etc.) I end with CMD-S to save metadata back to my DNG files. Everything seems to work (progress bar moves from left to right and then goes away), but when I scroll through my thumbnails, I see that some images still show a metadata changed badge and the metadata status in the metadata browser on the right hand side of the screen shows that there is unsaved metadata.

To make things more confusing, some of these images show a down-arrow-like badge and some show a thunderbolt-like badge, and these images show either "has been changed" or "..." in the metadata status field, respectively.

Very odd, very frustrating, and I can't make it stop behaving this way. Selecting all images and hitting CMD-S doesn't make any difference. Selecting one afflicted image and hitting CMD-S might work, or I might have to hit CMD-S twice to make the status reflect no changed metadata (both the badge and the text indicators).

All changes are within Lightroom and are not as a result of edits external to Lightroom.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

Kiwigeoff;821' said:
			
		

> I think if select all and cmd-s is applied only those files that have changed data will get written to, so sorting wouldn't matter?
> 
> Try a Crunchie Bar!!



Of course, when I was going through my torture test the other day (that led to this Thread), I was desperately wanting a filter by metadata save status option. That would have helped me tremendously.

Still could, as the only way to rectify this _might_ be to click on each affected thumbnail. If I could filter down to the ones without saved metadata, that might make my life a little bit easier.

That being said, I'm not sure this filter would be all that useful outside of my current situation, however.

Oh, and I'll see if I can find a Crunchie Bar. Never had one.


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## Braders (Feb 18, 2008)

Actually, a violet crumble is better than a crunchie, and of course we can't neglect the chokito, burger rings, and fantales.....mmmmm chocolate.


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## Victoria Bampton (Feb 18, 2008)

A violet crumble?  What's that?

This thread has gone WAAAAAY off topic!

Sorry we don't appear to have solved your metadata problem Ian!


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

Victoria Bampton said:


> A violet crumble?  What's that?
> 
> This thread has gone WAAAAAY off topic!
> 
> Sorry we don't appear to have solved your metadata problem Ian!



No problem. I am going to try the suggestions you and other made, and if all else fails, I will start over. It has now become a matter of principle since this doesn't appear to be a wide-spread issue. But, on a positive note, it will give me a chance to experiment with my library a little since I will not be worried about screwing anything up.


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## Kiwigeoff (Feb 18, 2008)

Ian Farlow said:


> No problem. I am going to try the suggestions you and other made, and if all else fails, I will start over. It has now become a matter of principle since this doesn't appear to be a wide-spread issue. But, on a positive note, it will give me a chance to experiment with my library a little since I will not be worried about screwing anything up.



Now back OT.
Ian at some point in the earlier releases I did have some files and I think they were mainly VC's always showing the flag that the metadata had been changed. Didn't matter what I did the flags wouldn't disappear even though the metadata had been written. I recall the issue disappeared during an upgrade. No one could work it out. Try a new catalog and import a few files for a test and see what happens.


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 18, 2008)

About to start. Just stepping away from the computer before I begin for a few minutes...


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## PatrickC (Feb 25, 2008)

We're all sitting on the edges of our chairs......



Patrick Cunningham


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 25, 2008)

Ah... yes. I ended up creating a new Catalog. I turned on Auto-XMP, and yet, on occasion, I still get the unsaved metadata warning. Nothing I do will fix this, but at least with Auto-XMP going, I feel _mostly_ confident that everything is saved.


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## Kiwigeoff (Feb 26, 2008)

That is wonderful, I can sleep easy tonight then.
I do the occasional select all in all photographs and cmd-s to be sure!!:lol:


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## Ian Farlow (Feb 26, 2008)

Hey, glad I could help you sleep!


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## Jay (Mar 4, 2008)

I have just encountered the same problem as Ian described but just in one folder.  It's a folder for which I updated ONLY the Metadata and Keywords from my XP laptop which I work on when I travel.  It doesn't have the DNGs, just the previews so all I transfer back and forth are MD and KWs.  You cannot do anything else to previews in isolation.  HOWEVER, when I then take the images with "down arrows", edit them in PS and resave them with a new file name, all MD and KWs seem to be carried over.  So it appears to be a non-problem.  Rob Sylvan from the NAPP help desk thought it might have something to do with dates, etc. so I'll play around a bit and see what happens.  I'll also try replacing the LR preferences file on my Mac as that often cures strange behavior.  I never encountered this problem before installing Leopard on my Mac, so that could have something to do with it.  In any case, this doesn't seem like anything to get worked up about.


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## Jay (Mar 4, 2008)

Forgot to add to my previous posting that ALL my images in LR are, for now .tif since they originated from scans of slides.  So no sidebar files.  Also, when i resave in PS they are still .tif as all i am doing at the moment is, for low rated images, cutting pixel size from 5'''x3''' to 25''x15'' and/or 16 bit RGB to 8 bit.  These steps shrink 11' Mb files to 27Mb or 13Mb.


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## Girts (Mar 14, 2008)

Hmmm, Metadata. Interesting.

I had metadata set to automatically write. And it did. So I relied on it doing it automatically. Yesterday, I finished working on a large batch of files, exported various sizes to various places, and removed them from LR to make space.

Today, I went back to one of the originals (always happens as soon as you've tidied up) and found no XMP files! The auto write option had got switched off. I don't remember doing it, but I guess it could have happened by accident, though I've no idea how.  Time to open the wine...

Girts


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## Brad Snyder (Mar 14, 2008)

Girts,

That particular setting is catalog specific.  Is it possible you were working in a different catalog, where the auto-write hadn't been enabled?

If you weren't already aware, FYI, settings which are set thru File > Catalog Settings dialog, are specific to the indiviual catalog. 

Settings which are set thru Edit > Preferences dialog are global.  (Note that you can get to catalog settings dialog from the bottom of the Preferences dialog as well, which sort of confuses everything)


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## Girts (Mar 14, 2008)

Thanks Brad, that could be it.


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