Bridge 4.1.0.54: Error writing Metadata to some [....].jpg

[NukeyAut]

I am sorting my files (.JPG) with bridge. Some files just can't get rated (bridge fails without giving me an error), and if I try to set other metadata (like keywords), bridge tells me "There was an error writing metadata to ".....JPG".

I have full access to the folder, it is an internal disk, the files are not locked. It affects about 5% of all files - this is the second shooting (&folder) where I have this problem. I don't see any differences between the files I can change and the ones where I can't.

I can rename the file with bridge, but that does change nothing. I tried purging the cache, it changed nothing.
I just found out: I can change the tags with Windows Explorer, Bridge does show them, and afterwards I can change them with bridge too. Someone got an Idea how I can avoid this step?

[Win7Pro x64, i7]

[Yammer]

Jingshu Li wrote:

From all the previous discussion and testing, I feel and agree with you that this issue (include the metadata write error and the thumbnail error) is more likely a Bridge cache / database issue, however I haven't found a good way to reproduce it in my office. I've asked another Bridge QE who's focusing on cache / thumbnailing to try this issue together with me. We still need sometime and might need more infor from you.

I don't think this problem will be easy to recreate reliably. I have been trying for months, and I still can't do it with any certainty. Also, it looks like it's unlikely that anyone will be able to supply you with faulty files, as it seems like Bridge is having trouble manipulating its database.

I can recreate the fault quite quickly, but randomly. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I can't work out what changes.

For example. I have recently compiled several Collections of about 600–1000 images. I can't keyword either of the first two collections I have selected (Error writing metadata) either in full, or a sub-selection. So, I selected about 60 images and loaded them into Camera Raw, changing the Sharpness Amount slightly, and clicking Done to close. Once the circle stopped spinning, I tried to keyword again, and it worked perfectly.

It seems to start with Collections or Finds—anything which groups images from different locations. Keywording files in these selections is hit and miss.

If any files refuse to be keyworded, they stay in this state; that is, by leaving the selection, and visiting the file's folder, it still produces the error if you try to keyword it individually. But clearly, this is not a problem with the file, as it can be keyworded on another computer. There must be a database record for each image, and this record's contents must somehow get into a state where it cannot be keyworded, unless it is updated by Camera Raw.

[cjk10280]

Dear Melissa,

same issue here (Error writing metadata to a number of JPG files). It happens mostly while adding keywords in batch but can also happen also when labeling or rating just one file.

If I open the file offending file in PS and resave it, then Bridge seems to be able to tag it, but it's hard to tell if that's because the file was resaved or because the new changes would be applied to only one file (rather than batch).

I did a lot of software development and the route I would take would be to have Bridge display a specific error code when it cannot rate, label or tag a file, based on what the problem is.

That would go a long way in helping zoom in on the problem.

My platform: Mac OS X, both Snow Leopard and Lion.

[Yammer]

I started using CS6 this week, and I am still bedding-in the new software, installing plug-ins, generating caches and indexes, etc.

I'm very pleased about Bridge going 64-bit. This makes life easier for two reasons: better/smoother performance; hosting 64-bit plug-ins, including Camera Raw.

I also read that Bridge has a new database; I'm not sure how this was announced, but it fills me with optimism.

I've had a couple of attempts at generating keywording metadata errors, and I am pleased to report that I failed! I followed the old method of grouping several subfolders' files and applying keywords in bulk, and the whole thing happened painlessly.

I suppose it's early days, but this problem could now be a thing of the past, but only if you get CS6. There's no fix for older versions, which is unfortunate for everyone who has suffered with this problem for years.

I thought that the preview/thumbnail regeneration issue had gone too, but it didn't take long to start again. Despite letting my computer index and cache 33,000 items this week, it still insists on updating parts of the cache on random subfolders.

[Yammer]

Curt Y wrote:

Yammer P wrote:

What I'd like to know is why an image refused to generate a thumbnail, until I renamed it outside Bridge.

Usually it is becasue there is some error in how the image file was constructed.  By saving it in another program whatever error was there, it was eliminated.  This is the same problem in a parallel thread http://forums.adobe.com/thread/925441?tstart=0 where OP can add metadata to files generated with his camera until he saves it in PS.

I'm reading through this thread again and noticed this.

You misinterpreted what I wrote. All I did was 'rename' the 'damaged' raw image (using Explorer). I did not open it in any application. Its binary contents were unaltered.

Bridge could not generate a thumbnail, even if the image's cache and XMP were removed, but it could generate a thumbnail for an EXACT copy of the image with a new filename (done outside Bridge). What does that tell you? It tells me that the filename/handle is tainted, and Bridge already has made assumptions about it (presumably a database entry using the filename as a key).

To me, this seems to be a similar behaviour to the metadata problem. Jingshu Li / Melissa was easily able to keyword a raw image+sidecar from my system when I could not - even when I copied them to several different locations on my computer. This suggests to me that the files themselves are not the problem, but my copy of Bridge had a problem with the files. I was able to use Camera Raw to update one minor develop setting, and the problem went away. I assume Bridge updated a database entry with this action, and corrected the previous problem.

[NukeyAut]

Thanks very much, as I do not use Adobe Camera Raw for JPG files, this

is a good workaround!

Best Regards,

Simon

Am 09.09.2011 11:19, schrieb Jingshu Li:

Dear NukeyAut,

Thank you for the sample test file. I reproduced the issue in my testing machine and now the developer is investigating it.

Here I have another workaround: if you usually won't use ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) to edit the JPG files, you can set 'Disable JPEG support' from Edit -> Camera Raw Preferences -> JPEG and TIFF Handling -> JPEG. And then you can write metadata to the jpg file in Bridge, no need to change the tags with Windows Explorer.

Thank you again for reporting the issue.

Melissa

Bridge QE

>

[Duong Vu]

It's working for me. Thank you!

[cherft]

Thank you Jingshu Li

This workaround WORKED on the first folder of files - 1 file.

After that it would not work again.

This is a very old thread - is there an update and a solution to this problem?

Would be grateful for your help.

Best regards

Chris

[Yammer]

Jingshu Li wrote:

It is a known issue that write metadata error to JPG and Tiff on a network shared Win7 or Win2008 server OS.

Bridge team is working on it.

Thank you for report it.

Melissa

Bridge QE

What about "Error writing metadata..." from the last few versions of CS on various versions of Windows (XP and 7 at least)? I have experienced this for years, especially when keywording using Collections of images from different folders.

It seems to me to be an issue with Bridge and file locking, with Bridge being unable to write to some files even though they are not opened.

My workaround has always involved one of the following:

1. wait several minutes until Bridge has stopped enumerating files

2. open the offending file(s) with Bridge, change some insignificant setting and save them again

3. restart Bridge

[Jingshu_Li]

Dear Yammer P,

I would like to clarify the issues you've met.

Do you mean usually you'll see the 'Error writing metadata...' error when you apply (especially) keywords to images in a collection?

If so, do you usually use camara raw files in the collection?

Actually there's another known issue that when apply metadata to camera raw files in collection will cause the error in some certain steps. I'm wondering to make sure if your issue is the know issue or not.

Thanks,

Melissa

Bridge QE

Yammer P wrote:

Jingshu Li wrote:

It is a known issue that write metadata error to JPG and Tiff on a network shared Win7 or Win2008 server OS.

Bridge team is working on it.

Thank you for report it.

Melissa

Bridge QE

What about "Error writing metadata..." from the last few versions of CS on various versions of Windows (XP and 7 at least)? I have experienced this for years, especially when keywording using Collections of images from different folders.

It seems to me to be an issue with Bridge and file locking, with Bridge being unable to write to some files even though they are not opened.

My workaround has always involved one of the following:

1. wait several minutes until Bridge has stopped enumerating files

2. open the offending file(s) with Bridge, change some insignificant setting and save them again

3. restart Bridge

[Yammer]

Jingshu Li wrote:

Do you mean usually you'll see the 'Error writing metadata...' error when you apply (especially) keywords to images in a collection?

If so, do you usually use camara raw files in the collection?

Actually there's another known issue that when apply metadata to camera raw files in collection will cause the error in some certain steps. I'm wondering to make sure if your issue is the know issue or not.

I'm dealing with Smart Collections or searches of tens or hundreds or thousands of raw images from a three-tiered folder structure of about 20,000 images. The raw images are proprietary Nikon files with sidecar files, processed only in Camera Raw. I would make selections of tens of images and apply (or remove) keywords, but often the Error Writing Metadata message would pop up for anything from one to most of the selected files.

Each error requires clicking on an OK button, which can take an eternity, and leaves many files unmodified. Trying the files again usually (but not always) results in the same error message. The longer you leave it, the better your chances.

Sometimes it would be fine. It seemed to get worse the longer I ran Bridge, and I would usually restart Bridge when things got unbearable.

[Yammer]

I've logged this bug on the Photoshop.com website.

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/error_writing_metadata_keywording_in_bridge

Please feel free to visit the link and click the "+1" icon to add weight to this issue!

[Yammer]

Hello

It's all gone quiet on this topic.

Do you need any more information?

Have you made any progress?

[Yammer]

The silence is deafening.

[SuzScriv52]

I'm having the exact same problem.  And the file content, camera, everything is identical.  The keyword tagging problem only occurs on some, not all of my photos, so I can't understand why this is happening.  I should also mention that I typically don't use Camera Raw to edit photos (although I do occasionally).  And I tried the suggested workaround (to disable the jpeg support), and it didn't help resolve the problem.  Will Adobe correct this problem on their next update?

Thanks,
Suzanne

[Kul1]

I regurlarly have this issue with Bridge. I use NEF and TIF only and have 8000/10 000 photos per folder. I don't know what causes this. But I have noticed that it occurs often after I clean the system of temporary files or when I open bridge when there ia a heavy load on the processor.

What I do is wait for Bridge to be done opening and then I press F5 to refresh. This has always done the trick for me. Maybe the criterias are not loaded properly. Who knows. Maybe Melissa can enlighten us on that.

FYI: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, U9400 1,4 GHz (Dual-core) intel processor, 4 GB RAM

[Guest]

Kul@, it seems like having 10,000 images per folder would put a heavy strain on the processor to built all the thumbnails especialy if HQ version.  The 4 gigs of ram probably probably does not help either.

I don't know what the effect of the number of files per folder.  My thing is that there more images there are per folder the higher the chance of a cache error when building the thumbnails.  I know in CS3 errors were common and compounded by any switch from the folder before the thumnail building process was finished.

With all that said I try to keep my files around 1,500 per folder and I use embedded thumbs.  Have never experienced a problem, but that could have nothing to do with folder size.

Will be interesting to see if Adobe can ferret out the answer.

[Yammer]

It could well be related to number of images, but not necessaily in the same folder. It seems to affect me when working with large numbers in Collections or Finds. Otherwise, I tend to have quite low numbers of images in individual folders. Say 10-100.

[Kul1]

It is a choice to have a large number of images per folder. The intention is to ease keywording, metadata editing and batch processing. Bridge is meant for professionals and as such should be able to handle the load. With large projects and collections, it would be impractical to have them spread out over several folders to accomodate Bridge.

As for my ultra portable, it is ideal for on the road and meets more than the minimum requirements to run CS5.

For sure, it happens that the processor cannot handle the requests Bridge puts on it. The program should be designed to handle this. I think that Bridge drops the request to the processor when it does not get an answer quickly enough.

The point of my post is that the workaround of this bug (In my opinion it is a bug) is to press F5 to refresh. This does the trick everytime. Some file must get corrupted because restarting Bridge and/or the computer doesn't restore my ability to edit image metadata only F5 does.

I love Bridge by the way.

[theMikeD]

I thought I was on to something, and posed my results before finding this thread, so I'll simply link to it.

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4159905

Sure would like to see this resolved. I really like the idea of a more specific error code or something to ease the tracing of this super-annoying bug.

...Mike

[Yammer]

Not being a Mac person, I'm not sure I understand your posts. You have found a correlation between file attributes and the problem, but not the XMP data itself?

What happens if you make a Camera Raw adjustment to a problem image, does this change the problem attribute?

Our best guess on the Windows side is that Bridge is getting its internal database out of sync with reality, although it's difficult to tell for sure because there is no specific error reporting.

I have noted myself that my collection of XMP sidecar files, which have been built up over 4 years, starting with ACR4, often look slightly different, as they have been untouched or updated with different versions of ACR for different adjustments. I don't know if inconsistencies in XMP structure, or a flaw in database management causes the metadata error to start, but in my case I strongly suspect that it is the database management. This because, I can almost guarantee the problem starts with searches and collections, where Bridge must have to build tables of file data from its database.

[Guest]

Yammer, you might visit this link in the Mac forum.  Similar problem?

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/952714?tstart=0

[Yammer]

That's the same thread as above

[Guest]

Yammer P wrote:

That's the same thread as above

I clicked on link and it is started by Mike D with metadata problems on a mac.  So try again?

[theMikeD]

Curt, your link is to a post in the thread i linked to above it. No big deal but that's what Yammer was talking about.

Yammer, I haven't been able to put my finder on the exact cause yet. My gut tells me it has something to do with Bridge not understanding XMP files written by older versions of Lightroom, but I can't confirm that.

The really frustrating thing is that if this error would generate a code that could be traced to a specific condition, we could at least identify the cause and figure out a work-around.

...Mike

[haggest]

I'm yet another person having the same problem (CS5 in a Win7 PC), when I'm in Bridge and try a Replace Metadata for an image file I get the famous "Error writing metadata to jpeg file" .  I run CS5 on a Win7 Pro PC which I just got three days ago and moved my photo images (2TB) drive from my old PC (running XP)  to my new PC (running Win7 Pro).  However,  I have discovered the following:

1) When I use Windows Explorer to look at the properties of the FOLDER containing my jpeg file they are noted as read-only

2) When I copy the exact same jpeg image file to my C drive (which was formatted under Win7), a folder I just created - Not marked read-only, and try replace the metadata - no problem

I believe its a question of Win7 ownership and permissions. I believe that the for some reason the physical drive I moved from my old PC to my new PC retains "ownership and permissions", so Win7 notes all of the folders as read-only, and won't write the metadata to the jpegs in that folder.

A very very poor workaround is to turn off the UAC (User Account Control). Set to never.  I have tried a number of suggested solutions but not found a way to remove the read-only setting for my image folders.  I will try copying some of my image files to a new drive formatted under Win7 Pro and see if that eliminate the problem for me. 

Please try setting your UAC to Never and let me know if that helps.  Also let me know if you find a way to remove read-only from folders.

Thanks,

Steve