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R
rolldogg
Participating Frequently
June 21, 2022
Question

Organizing all my photos and videos

  • June 21, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 1245 views

Over the years, I've accumulated over 100,000 photos and tons of videos all of which are stored on my NAS. Since there have been times when I've had hard drives crash, imported things more than once, etc. Some of the photos are really small, like they were at one point used as a thumbnail, and some of the videos have been corrupted and don't play. So, I thought it was about time to organize these things, which most are already kept in folders by year, then month, then day, but I also have a lot of other random folders that are full of more photos and videos.

 

Instead of wasting years of my life using Windows Explorer to compare what I actually have organized and working with all the random folders I have, I figured I would use Adobe Lightroom Classic to import, search through all my photos and videos, move them into a new location separating them into folders by the date they were taken, and then I could move all these folders back onto my NAS, possibly freeing up tons of space from duplicates and videos that don't render.

 

So far, the pictures have worked well, especially using a Duplicate Finder plugin, but using Lightroom Classic, I was able to import and move one folder of videos, but Lightroom won't import anything else. When I try to import videos from a different folder, first of all it doesn't even show a thumbnail of any video, but in the bottom left corner I can see how many videos have been detected, along with the size, and I can see that some of these others folders do contain duplicates since the number of videos to import decreases, but when I click on import my PC says it's importing but nothing is happening. After a LONG time, it'll pop up some errors about the videos not being readable, not being able to connect to a dynamic server, or something like that, and I end up with hours wasted and nothing done.

 

After looking online for similar issues someone may have had, I see that this is apparently an issue lots of people are having, not just me. So I've done all the things that have worked for most people like purging the cache, stopping the dynamicmediaserver from running in the background, restarting Lightroom, but I still can't get it to work like it should. I've removed Lightroom Classic completed and tried different versions, but still nothing works. Does anyone have any suggestions to organize these videos like I did with my photos? This is apparently an issue with Lightroom that has been ongoing and has not been fixed. Are there any other Adobe application that will do what I'm trying to do or anything made by someone other than Adobe? I might have too many videos or something where Lightroom just can't process all the information, but like I mentioned, the first time I imported videos and had them moved into separate directories based on the date they were taken worked fine. Of course, videos I shot back in 2005 are much different than videos I shot last year, as the ones I shot last year were shot in 4K Slog3, HLG, etc and are much larger files than the old videos. I just need some application where I can continue to organize my videos unless someone knows of a secret way to get Lightroom Classic working again to import videos on a Windows PC.

 

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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2 replies

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
June 21, 2022

Comment #2: getting photos into folders named by capture date is a small part of "organizing", in my opinion. I think you also need to commit to adding keywords and other metadata to your photos. Yes, I know that's a huge task with 100,000 photos, but if some day you want to find that great photo of Aunt Emma at her daughter's party, remembering what day the photo is taken is an impossible task with 100,000 photos. Keywords and other metadata are the best way that you can organize and find the photos later.

R
rolldoggAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 21, 2022

Yes, definitely plan on tagging, but see my response in prior post, and thank you for your help as I'm getting frustrated!

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
June 21, 2022

I figured I would use Adobe Lightroom Classic to import, search through all my photos and videos, move them into a new location separating them into folders by the date they were taken, and then I could move all these folders back onto my NAS, possibly freeing up tons of space from duplicates and videos that don't render.

 

Just import the photos to new locations on the NAS where LrC has created folders by capture date. Don't import and then move them afterwards.

R
rolldoggAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 21, 2022

Lightroom has already sorted through all my photos, put them into directories by date, and I'm almost finished going through all the duplicates to make sure I'm keeping the original instead of a thumbnail. When the photos are done, I'm planning to put them all back into folders categorized by year, then month, and then I can move the new folders of each day into the respective year/month folder. I am planning to start tagging more things since I never spent much time doing this in the past. I'd like to tag vacations we've been on etc, but another question I just thought of is if I run a facial recognition on all these photos, are the names added to the metadata or is this just something to make it easier to find when using Lightroom? I'd really like to recall pictures that certain people without having to rely on using Lightroom every time, especially if someone else accesses the photos remotely, or from their phone, they could still search for Aunt Emma at her daughter's party based on the results of the facial recognition. 

 

The issue I'm currently having is only related to videos. For some reason I can't view any videos using Lightroom. Like I mentioned, it worked great the first time I imported videos from some random folders that were full of random videos, and now each one is in its own folder based on the date the media was created. Lightroom sorted through approx 3500 videos before stopping and giving me errors, so I'm not even sure it finished the first task I gave it or if it went through all the files. Now, if I open Lightroom Classic, click on import, select a folder full of videos, it starts counting the number of videos and the size, but it doesn't show any thumbnails like it did the first time. If I go ahead and click on import, it says it's importing but hours go by without a single video showing up in Lightroom, and then I'm given a lot of different errors regarding the videos themselves, like unsupported format, can't access to file, error with the dynamic link server, always something different. If I select a file that Lightroom says isn't compatible, select it, and then select open using explorer, I get to an regular mp4 file that plays perfectly on many different players, and these are videos that are stored on my C drive, not even my NAS. So the issue is getting Lightroom to view videos in addition to pictures.

dj_paige
dj_paige
Legend
June 21, 2022

When the photos are done, I'm planning to put them all back into folders categorized by year, then month, and then I can move the new folders of each day into the respective year/month folder.

 

If you are going to do this manually, it is an awful lot of work for very little benefit. As I said, you will not remember which day the 100,000 photos were taken, you may not even remember the year, and so the primary benefit of calendar date folder is simply neatness and compactness. On the other hand, if you have Lightroom Classic do this organization into folders by month and year (or almost any other reasonable scheme), you don't have to put in a lot of effort to get the very little benefit; in fact its now trivial effort for very little benefit and I can recommend that.

 

I'd really like to recall pictures that certain people without having to rely on using Lightroom every time, especially if someone else accesses the photos remotely, or from their phone, they could still search for Aunt Emma at her daughter's party based on the results of the facial recognition.

 

In my opinion, a bad mistake. Computers and software, such as Lightroom Classic, are good at storing and remembering huge amounts of information, much better than humans. To try to remember where your 100,000 photos are stored without LrC (or similar program) is not going to work. You paid for LrC, you now have access to all the capabilities that you paid for, my opinion is that you should use these capabilities to their fullest.

 

if I run a facial recognition on all these photos, are the names added to the metadata or is this just something to make it easier to find when using Lightroom?

 

I don't know, I don't use facial recognition ... but you can try it and have an answer in a few minutes.

 

I can't help with your video problems either, LrC likes my videos just fine, but I don't have 3500 of them. You might want to try importing 10 at a time to see if that even works.

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