# Problems to migrate Keywords from Expression Media to Lightroom



## mahalubu (Sep 11, 2010)

Hello all,
I'm very new in Lightroom and I'm trying to get my metadata from Expression Media 2 into Lightroom 3.2, using John Beardsworth's "Search, Replace and Transfer"-Plugin, Version 1.2.
It would be great if anyone can help me!

I had imported a lot of (NEF) fotos with embedded EM-data in a new LR catalog. Some metadata were visible in lightroom.
I then created an XML-file in EM as described in John's doku. I found the expected data (hierarchical keywords with 3 or 4 levels) in the xml file.
Then I selected some fotos in LR.
After that I let the plugin parse this xml file and got a success message.
I pressed the "Process" button and didn't see anything happening. With OK I came back to LR but didn't see any new categories or keywords.
I switched logging on. In the log file I only found a friendly "Ciao", but this came from the successful XML-parsing. The next "Process" step didn't write into the log.

So, what's going wrong, what is it that I don't know yet??

Thanks for your help in advance!
Markus


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## johnbeardy (Sep 11, 2010)

Search Replace transfer only transfers EM's own metadata like custom fields and coloured labels - keywords should transfer through standard metadata methods. So in EM "Sync" the metadata, then in LR Metadata &gt; Read Metadata.

Ciao!

John


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## mahalubu (Sep 11, 2010)

Hello John (and all interested persons),
thanks for your quick answer.
Yes, I had done so, but I realized there were only parts of the metadata arrived in LR. Therefore I googled and found a lot of people who used your tool successfully. So I didn't try anything else, but bought your plugin ...

Now I used other tools to find out, what happened:
In a lot of files the
[XMP-lr] HierarchicalSubject: 
was not written at all by Expression Media, but in the xml-file which I exported because of SRT-plugin I found the associations.
I guess, I have to go to an EM-Forum now - or do you know immediately, what's going wrong with EM (or with me)?

Kind regards
Markus


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## mahalubu (Sep 11, 2010)

Hello again,
now I am totally confused:
The hierarchical keywords which arrived in LR all came from jpg files, but in my NEFs LR didn't find it. Also Phil Harvey's ExifTool didn't find any of my hierarchical keyword or xmp-data in the NEF. But they are inside - if I take a look in the binary NEF file I can find strings which look like my hierarchy in the form a|b|c.

Kind regards
Markus


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## johnbeardy (Sep 13, 2010)

It may be that LR doesn't expect to find xmp format metadata inside a NEF - it's a relatively recent (even surprising) development by Nikon. I'd have to test a little (and don't have time to do so)

Another idea might be xmp sidecars. Do the NEfs also have sidecars, in which case LR might prefer them over any metadata inside the NEF. Automatic sidecar generation might cause the problem.

John


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## johnbeardy (Sep 13, 2010)

Just did a quick test and things work as expected with a DNG (ie hierarchy imported), but with a NEF I don't see the keyword hierarchy being written into the XMP - individual flat keywords, yes, but not the structure.

John


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## mahalubu (Sep 14, 2010)

Thank you, John, for your help. I have asked PhaseOne now. I don't know if a can expect help there. I will post the results here...

Markus


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## mahalubu (Sep 21, 2010)

Here is the answer from PhaseOne technical support (not very surprising):

Dear Markus,
we are aware of this issue now and I have created a bug report for our developers.
We will address those issues once we fully take over the development of Expression Media with our own development team as currently we are still in the phase of taking over and analyzing the code.
Thank you very much for your understanding and for reporting this issue to us.
With kind regards,

Jakub
Phase One Technical Support


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## johnbeardy (Sep 21, 2010)

Not surprising, but probably fair at this stage.

I wonder if this will help.... I have just set up an identical keyword hierarchy in LR3 and in EM2, then in EM2 I synchronised the metadata back to a NEF file. I then imported the image to LR and - because the hierarchy already existed in LR - the keywords came in correctly.

If the keyword hierarchy isn't already set up in LR, then the NEF comes in with flat keywords. 

Of course, that only changes the problem to how to get the hierarchical keyword structure out of EM and into LR....

John


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## mahalubu (Oct 11, 2010)

Hello John,

sorry that I needed so long for my answer.
I took a dummy jpg file and set all the hierarchical keywords in Expression Media to this image to transport the whole structure into lightroom. Then I imported all my NEFs in Lightroom - and, surprise, as you said all the NEF files were categorized in the structure now.
I guess I had not seen that before, because I had too less JPGs to create a realistic structure in Lightroom, so the NEFs could not succeed to be imported.

Many thanks again, John!!


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