Keyword assignment stops before the job is done

[polyxo]

Win 10, 32 GB RAM, fast SSDs here.
When I use the keyword panel to set keywords to numerous files (mostly large psds) Bridge starts writing Metadata which is visible in the status bar. At some point, however, Bridge stops adding keywords and tells me that it creates thumbnails in the status bar (thumbnails are all there, no need to recreate them).

I see this issue when adding, when removing and when combining add and remove keyword operations. Alternatively, I tried using the file info panel with all relevant files pre-selected. Again, Bridge stars doing its thing, but suddenly stops, long before it should.

The keyword panel shows a dash in the checkbox, indicating that the keyword is partially assigned. If I click this dash I usually can restart the assignment (visible in status bar), but it will stop again. By repeating this procedure a couple of times one can write all desired keywords to the selection – but this all feels terribly slow and buggy. What can I do, to reliably write and remove keywords for a selection of 100 files or more? My SSDs should fly through this sort of minimal read and write operations...

Just for completeness, I should add that Dropbox is involved. I know that files on servers may cause issues. But all the files are stored on the local SSD. They are only getting synced to Dropbox. Does anyone know this problem and a cure? 

[polyxo]

My hunch was that Dropbox trying to pick up recent changes might interfere with the assignment process. I have therefore turned off Dropbox (so that keywords are only written to the local version) and ran a batch keyword assignment / removal. It made no difference. Bridge stopped mid-process again.

[Lumigraphics]

Yeah for one don't get anywhere near Dropbox with Bridge. Second, with large PSD files it will take forever. Just let it sit until the job is done.

[polyxo]

Thanks for your input! You say one should leave Bridge sit until the work is done.... I have not tried waiting for a longer period of time – as everything indicates that the assignment has stopped. No more new keywords appear under the thumbnails and the status bar tells me that Bridge is generating thumbnails... Also letting the program sit for a long time is hardly practical – I would usually like to go on assigning more keywords :o)

In our work context can't avoid using Dropbox (or another cloud-service which can leave all files on the local machine while it syncs all assets to the cloud). Yesterday I have turned off Dropbox, but this made no difference.

[Lumigraphics]

Yeah only use Bridge on folders that are not sync'd to Dropbox or you risk losing data.

Try running some tests on varying numbers of files to assign keywords. I did some shuffling of 1600px JPEGs yesterday, adding and removing labels and ratings and renumbering/deleting. A folder of about 6000 took several minutes to write a label to each one. PSD files will take much, much longer.

[polyxo]

Oh man, this would totally break our workflow. It would be more than silly to keep files in a local only folder until Metadata are assigned, before moving them to the synced folder. There's no way for us to work without syncing.

[Lumigraphics]

Then you shouldn't use Bridge. Bridge is not cloud-aware and the two will conflict.

[polyxo]

I'm still not sure if you understood how we run Dropbox. The default mode is that current files are locally cached but that every file eventually moves to the cloud. Dropbox pushes their customers hard to use that scheme.

But we don't. Our Bridge files are 100% local, all the time. Every single of them. Dropbox creates a copy, but it leaves the original in place. Dropbox has official support for Adobe products and Bridge is integral in our ACR / Photoshop workflow. We couldn't use Photoshop batch exports, actions and scripts in the way we currently can from any other DAM.

So far, I am not sold that Dropbox is the cause of my problem. As stated in my second post  – I have turned Dropbox off so that none of its processes was still running and my local graphics files had no idea that Dropbox even exists. Keyword writing still stopped after a couple of seconds, long before the end of the list. Dropbox running or not – it made no difference.

[Lumigraphics]

That isn't the problem with Dropbox. And Bridge does NOT work with Dropbox properly. There have been lots of reports of problems in these forums and elsewhere.

[jbm007]

Ditto