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P: Video Cache is out of control

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
October 19, 2015
148 replies
3274 views

I recently upgraded to Lightroom 6.2.1 So far there has been a lot of fuss over the import dialog... ok, well sure, it has a few issues, but they can be either worked around or just revert back to 6.1.1

I would like to report and ACTUAL bug in 6.2.1

My D drive recently ran out of space... I tried deleting some stuff I didn't need, but still it kept running out of space... So I finally ran windirstat and had a look at it.. Nearly HALF of my drive was FULL of D:/temp/Adobe Local/Lightroom/caches/video/media Cache Files. Now here's the kicker... NONE of these video files are even on the hard drive that has my catalog on it. My lightroom database is on drive L:\ all my lightroom photos and very few lightroom videos are all on L:\ I have a few scans on drive K:\ that I import to lightroom... but these videos are ALL on Drives E:\ and F:\

here's another thing.. I knew Adobe wasted space caching videos, and I do have a GOPRO and I record a little video,.. .VERY LITTLE, maybe 1 video a year... so I don't really want ANY of the video cached.. I will wait for it to load... SO a long time ago, I set my video cache in Preferences>File Handling to the minimum of 1GB (It's was always a BUG to not allow 0GB) I don't want to cache any videos!!!!!!!!!! but here it is.. NEW BUG It's STILL SET TO 1GB!!!!!!!!!!! How is it gobbling up almost 1TB of space when I have it set to 1GB??????????????? So.... here's another problem... I have Cache files that are 4GB for a movie that only takes up 2GB on my hard drive.. what's up with THAT??????????????? I randomly checked a few, and the worst one was a 5GB cache file for a movie that only takes up 750MB on my hard drive... two things, first of all... you NEVER EVER EVER need to cache an entire movie... caching more than 1 minute of a video is useless... if you're going to watch the video in lightroom, it can just play the video on the hard drive fast enough that it doesn't need further caching.. second... DON'T CACHE THE VIDEO AT ALL!!!! just capture the thumbnail of it so you don't have a blank square on the catalog and call it a day... if someone wants to play the video, it will load and play plenty fast enough, Lightroom Can't work with video files, only play them, so WHY BOTHER TO CACHE THE WHOLE THING?? come on Adobe, some COMMON SENSE please!!!!

so now ANOTHER BUG, it's already set to limit video cache to 1GB, so I figure, the new import thing must have built this RIDICULOUS Cache, so I will just Purge it, that will bring it down to 1GB right??/ WRONG!!! It pops up a message saying "Video cache is being purged, this message will be dismissed when the purge is finished... I wait 5 Seconds, and the message disappears, I have NO hard drive activity, and well... I STILL have 1GB of Video Cache files!!!!!!!!!!! Ok, maybe it didn't take.. let me set it to 2GB, then purge.. NOPE! let me set it back to 1GB then purge, NOPE..

ok, so I suspect how to fix it will be, (I Hope) click import, and select the movies folder and then select Ignore source... by the way, how do I add my E:\scans folder as a legitimate source.. I just removed a source, how do I add a nice shortcut button for a new one? ok, now that source is removed, I hope it won't scan it again... now that it will HOPEFULLY not scan that hard drive again, I'll manually delete the offending Video cache.. ok manual delete complete, Ahh my drive can breathe again.. Lets open light room and see what happens.... ok.. open.. lets open the Import dialog because eventually I'll need to import something... oh-o..... What's this??? Scanning Common Locations... OH-NO!!!!!!!!!! first of all E:\Moves and F:\TV are NOT COMMON LOCATIONS FOR PHOTOS Second, I REMOVED THOSE LOCATIONS.. It has a valid location listed, WHY IS IS LOOKING FOR SOMEWHERE ELSE????? Yes it's now scanning VIDEOS and the only reason for it to be taking so long is it went back to my E and F drive... lets look at the cache folder... oh yes, MediaCache already has 3,876 files in it.... not looking very good. Why is it caching files that are not even imported into lightroom??? and why is the cache for each file taking up more space than the entire video??? If you want to make a video cache.. just cache the THUMBNAIL ONLY!!!!! we don't need or want anything else cached.. a thumbnail is all we need cached for our few relevant videos so we don't have a black square in our catalog.

Crap, I'm going to be FORCED to revert to 6.1.1 even though I had every intention of working around the other 6.2.1 issues. TEST TEST TEST Test your software!!! the monkeys you have testing it are not doing a good enough job! send it to me, I'll test it for you, It needs to be tested on a real computer, one that is used for other things.. that way you would KNOW it's finding stupid things like CD cover art and every movie and tv show on my hard drive. I seem to find glaringly obvious issues within one day of using the product. I've been developing software for the last 28 years, I know how it should be done, and how things should be tested, and this is NOT being done AT ALL. Your programmers are sub-standard and are missing the mark, and your non-existent SQA department is NOT testing even the simplest of functions.

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meachp

Participating Frequently

I had the problem with LR 5 - I've put full details in a comment below.

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meachp

Participating Frequently

The bug existed in LR 5 - see my own entry below.

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meachp

Participating Frequently

For what it's worth, I identified this problem with LR 5 - and it may go back further. When LR6 was released I had so little space on my SSD that I had to remove LR5 (whichever was the last version) to make room for it. I then investigated the problem to see what was taking up all my disk space and when I found and deleted all the huge files (some much larger than the original) in the media cache files folder - I think there must have been one for every video file that had ever been on any of my hard drives (none of which had ever been anywhere near LR) - I suddenly had 66 Gb of free space on a 112 Gb drive. I've just had to do it all again this morning. The really annoying part of all this is that my System Restore files keep getting deleted so Adobe will one day be responsible for completely wrecking someone's system if they don't stop this happening. I have never imported a video file into Lightroom so I don't understand why it would want to cache any of them. I'm already leaning more towards ACR because I dislike being tied into LR's catalogue system, but if I start to feel as though the integrity of my data as a whole is being put at risk by this "feature", i.e. Windows deleting my System Restore files because I'm low on disk space, then I'll happily ditch LR altogether - my photos are important to me but other data is more so. This needs fixing with some urgency - as others have mentioned, many users won't even be aware of what's happening and won't have any idea what to do about it when they suddenly discover they have run out of disk space. And their System Restore files have gone - Windows doesn't warn you, they're just not there when you go to look for them.

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meachp

Participating Frequently

The bug existed in LR 5

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TomFidd

Known Participant

Reinforcing some of the comments above, I think it makes no sense to indiscriminately cache large videos. Playback quality is not any better than it is in other players (say, VLC) that don't cache, and these files are not likely to be frequently accessed anyway. I'm finding that a 1GB mov or mts expands to 2+GB in the cache. With any reasonable cache size for an SSD, this means that the cache will be highly volatile, because one huge file will constantly be swapped for another. The cache is likely to degrade performance, not accelerate it. If caching is needed for quick startup, how about caching only the first 30 seconds of each item, and permitting the user to designate an external player for extended viewing?

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TomFidd

Known Participant

I avoided 6.2, and had this problem with 6.1, and probably a lot earlier judging by cache file dates.

ssprengel

Inspiring

Yes, there are two issues, the pre-caching of video files before an Import that completely ignores the video cache limit, and the lack of a smaller limit than 1GB if you're on a small SSD. To fix the latter it seems allowing a cache-limit value of 0 would be an easy-enough change.

ssprengel

Inspiring

A more permanent solution is to rename the dynamiclinkmediaserver.exe (there will be several copies with the one under the LR program folder being the one) so LR cannot start it up next time the Import is used.

Of course the next time a LR update is installed the exe will be put back so you have to rename it periodically.

jamesr33423836Author

Participating Frequently

you need to either terminate the dynamic link media server process or reboot your computer before you remove the erroneous cache files or it will just come right along behind you and fill up again after you free up space.

jamesr33423836Author

Participating Frequently

this all basically re-describes the original bug that I reported to start this thread.. except I touched on, but never imported on my media storage drive and it went WAY over the cache limit gobbling up nearly 1TB of space! The only reason it stopped is because I ran out of space on the drive.. but stupidly, even THAT did not stop the process, because as I was deleting files from my drive to free up space, it would fill the drive back up with an even bigger cache.. you see, I did not know it was the cache using up all my space, so I was deleting and moving legitimate files from my hard drive only to have that space further wasted by this cache problem.. all this to cache files that had NO business being cached, nor being cached correctly. It's NEVER ok for the cache file to be 2-4 times the size of the original file.. thats just wrong.

It is my opinion that videos NOT be cached simply because they were imported, but rather cached it the files are ACTUALLY played in light room! most of them never will be, so caching them is a waste.

We should be able to disable video cache without losing the ability to view thumbnails or play un-cached videos in lightroom.. I would prefer NOT to give up 1GB of space on my SSD to cache legitimate videos that belong on lightroom because that will rarely if ever be actually played in lightroom, but I want them with their associated photographs

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