Should LR be checking XMP/ACR (Metadata files) for video files?

Question

Windows 11Lightroom 15.4.1I have recently enabled ‘Automatically write changes into sidecar files (XMP/ACR)”  - mainly as a safety net in leu of other issues, but that is not relevant here.It took a while for LR to complete the saving of all metadata files - probably 12 hours (259K files in the catalog).I just loaded LR, edited one image in PS and saved. It appeared in LR and then I clicked CLOSE on LR. It warned me that Metadata processing was still busy. I checked the status and 843 files are being processed. The folder I have open only has 744 images.I used Resource Monitor to check what files lightroom.exe was accessing - and it is lots of MP4/MOV/AVI files ... in folders unrelated to the folder I was viewing at the time.I have repeated this and seem similar activity each time.It’s not a problem - but i wonder why it needs to scan video files at all?   and why it does this regardless of the images I am working on.

johnrellis · Answer

Using Process Monitor, I saw LR reading a relatively small number of bytes from the videos in the catalog, e.g. 100K - 300K per video, but only after I first enabled Catalog Settings > Automatically Write Changes. After then, I didn’t see any reads from the videos. The reading will also occured when I selected all the videos and did Metadata > Save Metadata To File.

I’m guessing that the background task that checks the metadata status of files is reading the metadata from the video files and comparing it with what’s in the catalog (as it also does for photos). As you observe, this isn’t necessary for videos, since LR doesn’t write sidecars for videos. But I observe LR doing this only once per video.

The background task that checks metadata status runs over the entire catalog, regardless of which folder you’re currently working in.

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