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P: Video Cache is out of control

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
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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TomFidd

Known Participant

That's how I discovered the problem too - 90GB of cache on my SSD.

However, I thought all the cached files originated from things in my catalog. If it's also caching things that are just touched by the import process, or the whole hard drive, that's worse, but either way it would be a problem for me.

If 6.4 at least clears the cache when it opens, that'll be a huge improvement.

gordong23738575

Participant

I am very curious how Adobe, a reputable company, allows this huge bug to be there consistently over several versions of LightRoom. Are we the only guys in this world that have video and photo files in one folder?

PLEASE fix it ADOBE!

ssprengel

Inspiring

LR caching all the files in a folder because that folder is open in an import grid is like a computer caching all the files in a folder in RAM just because you open the folder in Explorer/Finder.

Computers don't do this because RAM is precious. LR should start treating disk space as precious and be smarter about what it's doing.

Filling up a disk with pre-processed video files before LR knows whether they will be used isn't smart.

Churning through a folder of video files creating then deleting the cached file because the video cache is full isn't smart.

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meachp

Participating Frequently

Tom, nobody would ever notice until, as in my case, their C drive filled up. I had so little space left I couldn't install LR CC until I removed LR 5.7 back in April. Then, when I investigated, I found 65 Gb of cached video files courtesy of Adobe - and I have never imported any video into Lightroom. So don't be hard on yourself - I'm sure the world is full of Lightroom users with full (or nearly full) C drives who have no idea why! Nor what to do about it except delete/move other files that they'd rather stayed where they are.

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meachp

Participating Frequently

Having done another test I'll be fair and concede that when you open Lightroom, it does clear out the media cache and that is an improvement I'm grateful for. But that's no use whatsoever when this app sets off and fills up your hard drive, causes Windows to delete your Restore Points to free up space, and then crashes anyway because your drive is full, and all just to cache files pointlessly. Instead of getting Lightroom to tidy up after itself you'd have been better off stopping it making such a mess in the first place. Can you not answer the simple question that has been asked on this thread several times now - "Why does Lightroom cache video files that have not been imported?". If it didn't do that we wouldn't need to have this discussion - and this thread wouldn't exist.

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TomFidd

Known Participant

I'm not sure that would solve the problem either. As long as the cache files are bigger than the originals, DLMS is going to hit the cache size limit right away whenever it hits a folder with big videos in it. After that it would just be churning, throwing out one file to make room for the next.

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TomFidd

Known Participant

You can eliminate caching yourself by renaming the dynamiclinkmediaserver helper, or its folder, but then you have no video preview in LR. So there's also a dependency on cached video that has to be addressed.

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TomFidd

Known Participant

I haven't noticed the behavior of caching things LIghtroom hasn't touched, but maybe I'm not paying close enough attention. Anyway, caching the videos in my collection is already troublesome.

But I think the whole premise of caching is flawed. Its ostensibly done for smooth playback - but who uses Lightroom as a video player? There just isn't a good reason to cache files in their entirety.

For me, the purpose of a cache ought to be to serve as a video thumbnail, for fast previewing. That wouldn't require caching the whole file, nor would it require full resolution. Just give me the first ten seconds, and some key frames later at wide intervals. If viewing is extended, play at lower quality, or let me hand off playback to VLC (or whatever).

If each file were cached to a thumbnail like this, it wouldn't hurt much for DLMS to go hog wild.

I'm glad this is getting some attention.

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meachp

Participating Frequently

Well that pretty much means Lightroom is unuseable for anyone with a largish collection of video files and limited space on their C drive (like anyone using a SSD) - not everybody has multiple drives to keep all these things separated. I only have about 50 Gb free and this app fills it in less than 20 minutes. And it fills it with unwanted, pointless, inflated files that I will never need because I don't import video into Lightroom. Why can't you just cache files that are actually imported instead of every video file that comes into range?

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simonsaith

Adobe Employee

I understand. That is why I said is a design hole that DLMS should have enforce its own caching limit when running. What Lr 6.4 fixed helps in certain situations (it is more as a short term workaround), but it is not addressing the core design issue.

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