Inspiring

Question

why do 215 images in a catalog need 7,369 XMP files in CAXMPFiles folder?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
January 30, 2020
4 replies
2303 views

Env. is PSE 2020 on Windows.

See subject. I have a catalog--not my primary catalog--with 215 or so images. The CAXMPFiles folder for this catalog has 7,369 XMP files. Each of these relatively tiny files has an overhead of wasted file space in addition to cost to backup, etc.

Is this for real?!?! If not, why is Elements Organizer running amok here and how do I fix it?

I have another similar catalog with 480 or so images and 402 XMP files in the CAXMPFiles folder. My primary catalog has 33k images or so and 38,285 XMP files in the CAXMPFiles folder.

Edit to add: 7,200 or so of these were created in a several hour span yeterday morning. All I'd done was open the catalog, look around to see if it had an image I was remembering, and then close it.

This topic has been closed for replies.

MichelBParis

Legend

@ALM4

Not much help on the question of the Autobackup, I do not use it. I rely on Macrium Reflect for daily backups of all my critical drives. But just "5 ways to Sunday".

I also use another similar backup tool (Acronis) but that's not enough, and that does not take care of two situations:
- You want to move to another computer. The backup and restore process alone will ensure that restoring on a different computer, drive, partition or master folder will keep the links in the catalog to new location of the files.

- For some reason, only the catalog is not accessible or corrupt: the automatic autobackup each time you quit the organizer takes a backup after checking for errors. Most PSE users don't do a complete daily backup and they would not even know how to restore the catalog folder only with Macrium/Acronis.

My general comment would be that I wish Adobe was clearer about where it stored its temporary or "can be recreated easily" files, and give more control to the user to stick them on a spare "don't bother backing up" drive. Wishful thinking.

I understand what you mean and in the present case, I don't find any doc or help to explain where the catalog _autobackup_ file is stored and how it can be used. Udpating the online and pdf help is a bit late and I don't expect Adobe Staff to give answers in this forum. I mentioned this feature because it is related to the OP's question: how to get rid of xmp files. It could be a safe and easy way for non 'techy' users to do it without fiddling in catalog folders or backup folders.

As for your wishes, it's interesting to compare the choices in the Organizer and in Lightroom Classic. The organizer uses a backup workflow devised twenty years ago to ensure that the catalog (the folder) is restored with correct links whatever the new destination. With any other backup method, the restored catalog folder has to be 'reconnected' to the new destination. The reconnecting feature is inefficient for big libraries. The reconnecting feature of Lightroom is correct if you follow the recommendations. So, what I would expect (another wishful thinking) is that the organizer provides an efficient way to reconnect a big library. Why not use AI for the purpose, since Adobe boasts about such new features?

A

ALM4

Participating Frequently

Since my system is result of 40 years of evolution, with many migrations to faster hardware, it is a complex arrangement of 10 partitions across 18 terrabytes. I always want to know where everything is and what its role is and can I safely purge it. Your description of Adobe's backup capabilities is interesting, I might have to play with it to see if it would be useful for the day when I decide to really
"clean house".

MichelBParis

Legend

Just an additional note about the CAXMPFiles subfolder in a catalog.

You may have noted that in PSE2021, you have the ability to save the "structure" of a catalog, without the media files themselves.

You find the 'backup' under ProgramData/Adobe/Elements Organizer/Catalogs/_Autobackup_

Interestingly, the backup folder does not contain the thumbnail cache, which can be recreated at will. It does not either contain the CAXMPFiles folder. I conclude that in case of restoring the catalog, those xmp files are not restored. which may be a way to clean up those xmp.

I have found no tech or help doc about restoring the catalog but it does only require to rename the above folder as a new catalog; maybe some automatic process may trigger that if the catalog is found unusable.

Since the location for the Autobackup folder is common for all catalogs, I am not sure what happens if you backup different catalogs.

Is only the latest backed up catalog available or is there a way to know which is which?

D

Dick WAuthor

Inspiring

Two data points:

1) I have done auto backups for three different catalogs. All appear to be stored in the ProgramData/Adobe/Elements Organizer/Catalogs/_Autobackup_ folder, each in a different subfolder with some kind of UUID name. If I had to tell which was which, I could do it by number of items in each of the subfolders. But that might not be as easy for, say, similar sized catalogs. MAybe peeking around in each could eventually tell you somehow? Agreed, use of these is pretty poorly documented, it seems.

2) Already having backups seven different ways to Sunday, and having not used that catalog most recently so I knew that PSE wouldn't be mucking in it in the background, I dove in and renamed the problem CAXMPFiles folder to CAXMPFiles WAS. Then I created a new, empty, CAXMPFiles folder, and opened the catalog. No crashes. All appeared the same. Even the handful of Smart Tags and their associated images. (I finally figured out where they are hidden...) Within a few minutes, I had 40 new .XMP files in CAXMPFiles. Half an hour later I still had 40 new .XMP files in CAXMPFiles.

I'm thinking whatever caused PSE 2020 to go berserk creating tens of thousands of .XMP files for this catalog will just have to forever remain yet another Photoshop Elements Organizer Mystery™.

MichelBParis

Legend

I can't understand why nobody has given the answer about the CAXMPFiles folder.

It's used and necessary for the face recognition of people.

I don't use it myself; so I don't have those xmp files. Face recognition needs to record in some way where each face is located in each image. An image can hold many faces, so it's not unusual to have more xmp files than photo files.

However, the details given above suggest that old xmp data is kept or converted with each PSE version, probably without any cleaning or updating.

I'll leave face recognition users comment on the details, but I can suggest that it is easy to try what happens if you delete the xmp files.

First, you locate your catalog folder (menu Help >> system info of the organizer)

- you copy it with a new name elsewhere

- you test deleting the xmp

- you open the organizer by a double click on the catalog.pse19db file for your PSE2021.

Now, you'll see what you have lost in your face recognition.

I suppose you'll want to reopen your original catalog and delete the test catalog afterwards.

D

Dick WAuthor

Inspiring

I saw this entirely on PSE2020. As noted, the images in question almost exclusively had one or no faces. (It's a catalog of images of one person.) Maybe 5% of them had two. Tops. 215 images. 17,801 XMP files created. Enough for 82 faces per image. Over 10,000 were created in less than three hours of file .XMP timestamps.

Maybe I should just dump them all and re-recognize the faces. Of course, it might run off into Adobe-la-la-land again...

N

NidhiSachdeva

Community Manager

Hi

Sorry about the incovenience you are facing. Sidecar file is created when you do any edit on the file and as you mentioned above, you are not doing any edits and still number of xmp files are getting created.

Could you please provide below details to know more on this problem and help you fix this.

which camera you are using? If possible, please share any one sample picture from catalog for which xmp is getting generated.
Also, please share one of the xmp file. You may open the file in notepad and copy and paste the content here.

You can share the files in private message if not comfortable here.

Regards,

Nidhi

D

Dick WAuthor

Inspiring

The CAXMPFiles folder now has over 17,800 .XMP files. No end in sight. This is crazy!

The images in the catalog are, with only one or two exceptions, scans from a Nikon DS5000 or an Epson Perfection 636 ~~a Canon LiDE80~~. Some are TIF, some are JPEG, some are DNG, some are SilverFast HDR TIFF, some are NikonScan TIF. (I have examples of all of these formats in other catalogs; those catalogs don't have this runaway XMP file creation.) None of these files has been edited anytime recently but this runaway XMP file creation seems to be a recent phenomena. I have tried catalog repair and optimize. Still thousands of XMP files, still thousands being created. There is only one recognized face in the people stacks. No image has more than two faces recognized; not all have even one.

I will provide several images and XMP files via PM ASAP.

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