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ShootingMountaineer
ShootingMountaineer
Participating Frequently
November 17, 2023
Question

Video playback performance in Lightroom Classic is choppy, stuttering, skipping, fails to playback

  • November 17, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 1774 views

Video playback performance in Lightroom Classic CC is generally bad and usually degrades after attempting to playback a few videos. Playback is typically choppy, even with relatively lightweight HD files, and especially with UHD or 4K+ content. The video will often stutter when playing, sometimes skipping large sections of video, or playing at a low frame rate and other times completely failing to playback the visuals all while the audio finishes playing. Video in Lightroom Classic usually also appears very low quality when attemting to playback, usually playing at lower resolution with lots of jaggies / aliasing. 

 

Lightroom Classic has advertised a lot of useful video tools (see: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/video-lightroom.html) that are nearly impossible to use properly due to its inability to playback video properly.

 

This issue has been persistent in LRC for years, across multiple systems and any catalog with more than a few videos in it.  It can be replicated by importing a couple dozen 4k videos and then attempting to play them in LRC.

 

System information:

2021 16” Macbook Pro with M1 Max and 64GB of RAM.

 

Lightroom 13.0.1 on macOS Sonoma 14.1.1​​ 

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    3 replies

    ShootingMountaineer
    ShootingMountaineerAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    November 28, 2023

    Just a note: I reported this as a bug but Adobe employees moved it into general discussion.

     

    Apparently it's the appropriate functionality for a GPU with 64GB of available RAM and hardware h.264 and HEVC decoders to studder on 10 second video files.  Might make sense if this same company also didn't make one of the most popular video editing programs in the world.

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    November 28, 2023

    Agree with the sentiment. As I mentioned above, video is LR's unwanted stepchild. It was added in LR 3 as a checklist feature, improved some in LR 4, and mostly ignored since then.

    B
    Community Expert
    Bill SpragueCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    November 28, 2023

    I continue to use Lightroom Classic to manage all my image files.  No, LRC does not play video as good as it might.  But, as file manager, it works fairly well. 

     

    If you let the preview buffers load, 'scrubbing' works to see the content.   If you are a hybrid shooter, import works to move all files to the computer from the card in one organized step.  LRC  makes it easy to delete the bloopers, both video and photo.  For critical viewing on Windows, it is quick enough to select a video, 'show in Exporer' and view with VLC, a common player.   Once video files are selected for a project, it is easy to Export "as original" to a project folder for editing with Premier,  Premiere Elements or other.  This is particularly useful if you keep your originals on a (slower) external drive and want to move them to a fast SSD for editing efficiency.  

    lonelyspeck
    lonelyspeck
    Participating Frequently
    November 19, 2023

    Playback of videos in Lightroom Classic is a terrible experience. Videos often stutter or fail to playback. This applies to ANY video, but especially on UHD or 4K+ files. Often, after a few attempts, only a blank screen is shown as audio continues to play. When video does playback on occasion, it appears aliased and low quality.

     

    This issue has been a problem for years and still persists. When I attempted to revive my years old thread for this ancient problem my "ancient thread" was locked. 

     

    I'm on Adobe Lightroom Classic 13.0.1 with Ventura 13.6.2 on an M1 Max - 10 Core, 32 GPU Core, Macbook Pro, 64GB Memory and 2TB SSD. Files that fail to playback properly are a mix of HD and UHD files from a Sony a7C, a7III and Canon EOS RP.

      lonelyspeck
      lonelyspeck
      Participating Frequently
      November 19, 2023

      For anyone that wants to review the "ancient thread" that was locked, please see here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/video-playback-performance-in-lightroom-classic-is-choppy-stuttering-skipping-fails-to-playback/m-p/14239816#M345220

        johnrellis
        johnrellis
        Legend
        November 19, 2023

        "This issue has been persistent in LRC for years"

         

        There have been persistent reports here about poor video playback since video was added to LR 3. Video is LR's stepchild, getting at most minimal support from Adobe. 

         

        So I always open catalog videos in Mac Quicktime as a matter of course. To quickly open a video in the default video player, use the Open command of the Any File plugin (the Open command is free to use). Assign a keyboard shortcut to Open (on Mac, I use Ctrl + O).  The web page for the plugin explains how to assign a keyboard shortcut on Mac and Windows.

         

         

         

         

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