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jamesr33423836
jamesr33423836
Participating Frequently
October 19, 2015

P: Video Cache is out of control

  • October 19, 2015
  • 148 replies
  • 3139 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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    148 replies

    Show previous replies
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 12, 2016
    The only Adobe product I use are Lightroom and Reader, so 100% of the files are being generated from Lightroom. I will run the change the 2nd directory media cache file directory to read only and run the same tests and report back. Fortunately, I remembered to turn off the secure erase option in Finder, so the delete took 5 minutes instead of 5 days.
    S
    Adobe Employee
    simonsaith
    Adobe Employee
    February 12, 2016
    I was told the video caching helps video playback performance in Lightroom. I am not an video expert and I don't know the extent which it would help. As you already know, DLMS is a shared component between many Adobe products and there isn't a way to turn the video caching off. Lightroom allows one to index into a random frame in the stream to use as a key frame for the thumbnail. 

    You'll see some improved Lightroom video cache management in the next update. And we're engaging the larger group of teams inside Adobe to have a longer term fix. Thanks for your patience.
    T
    TomFidd
    Known Participant
    February 12, 2016
    I can see why you might want to cache a full resolution version of a video for Premiere, transcoded into something that gives fast random access for editing. But this makes little sense for Lightroom.
    S
    Adobe Employee
    simonsaith
    Adobe Employee
    February 12, 2016
    Some other Adobe products like Bridge, PS, After Effects and Premiere stores the video cache in the /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files location.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 12, 2016
    Update....

    Upon resumption of LR use after deleting 200+ GB of cache file data, the problem is still happening to (maybe) a lesser degree because of caching activity in a second directory. To recap, I had set the first directory pathway to read-only and this setting persists. I found the second directory last night after observing a similar rapid reduction of free disk after using the import function to look at large amounts of data, but importing a small number of photos.

    These are the problem target directories:

    /Users/username/Library/Caches/Adobe/Lightroom/Video/Media Cache Files (202 GB, now 0 KB)
    /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common/Media Cache Files (60 GB)

    What is in the second directory?
    * 2,512 cache files
    * Largest single file size 841 MB
    * Files clearly related to video files I did not import into Lightroom.

    So now I'm wondering if I need to repeat the delete process on the 2nd directory and change the permissions to read-only. 

    For the record, 262 GB is over half of my hard drive, all related to crap LR cache files.

    Out of control in deed...
    jamesr33423836
    jamesr33423836Author
    Participating Frequently
    February 9, 2016
    It isn't a good strategy for ANY drive.  It's just a waste of resources period
    T
    TomFidd
    Known Participant
    February 9, 2016
    When I tried deleting the cache and renaming dynamiclinkmediaserver, I lost my video thumbnails. But that was a few versions back.

    In any case, transcoding whole libraries of video for random access preview is not really a sustainable strategy for SSDs, and large lightroom catalogs need SSDs. If preview is the goal, then the resolution and frame rate need to be scaled down a lot.
    ssprengel
    ssprengel
    Inspiring
    February 8, 2016

    I would guess Previews of photos and videos are still stored in the regular LR Previews area. 

    I would guess that what is put into the Media Cache helps with when you drag left and right over a video thumbnail and see different frames quickly and/or when you click Play in Library you don't have any delay.  Obviously gigs of cache isn't for holding a preview frame, it's for an alternate encoding of the video that allows more direct access.

    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 8, 2016
    Finally completed deleting all files in the Media Cache Directory. Note to anybody else on Mac who attempts this... TURN OFF SECURE ERASE before deleting. I forgot to do turn off secure erase, and it took 5-6 days to delete 202 GB of crap data. 

    I changed my user account permissions to Media Cache Directory to read only, then created a test directory with 1 photo file and 1 video file to see how the application behaved during import. On the upside, nothing was created in the Media Cache File directory. On the downside, I was not able to see a thumbnail for **EITHER** the photo or the video. I had expected (and preferred) to see a thumbnail for the photo file but not the video file.

    Since I was not able to see a thumbnail for the import photo, I checked LR's behavior with my photo catalog. I can see thumbnails for the pictures. I also see thumbnails for video and am able to play a video. This was odd, I didn't expect to see video thumbnails.

    Went back to the import function on my test directory. I noticed that the Import was set to "New Photos". I changed Import settings to "All Photos" and suddenly I could see thumbnails for **BOTH** the photo and the video file. That is also really strange. I am now worried that LR has started saving cache files in a different location. That will require further investigation; with a 5 second glance through the /Users/myusername/Library/Caches/Adobe/Lightroom directory, I don't see anything suspicious.

    On a different note, due to issues during the secure delete process I ran Disk Repair, and the manual permission settings on the Media Cache Directory were not tagged for repair so that change appears to be persistent.

    It's a bit soon to say that changing the user permissions on the Media Cache Files is a low impact solution to this problem on the Mac, but it seems promising. Given my tests so far I would recommend this a temporary strategy to deal with the cache bloating. I will continue with my importing process while keeping a close eye on the overall disk usage.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMember
    Inspiring
    February 8, 2016
    Couldn't agree more... It's a joke. What kind of lousy programming is this? Previews take ages to load and so is switching images, they should hire some real talented folks like those developing FRW or Photo Mechanic. For the time being, just add a checkbox to disable video caching. Thank you.
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