P: Do not delete the “Capture Date” when exporting videos

[Mathias32515695vfub]

When a video is exported from Lightroom Classic, the “Capture Date” (CreateDate or DateTimeDigitized) is overwritten with the time of the export. However, the “Capture Date” must not be changed during export. It works when exporting photos.

[JohanElzenga]

The problem with video is that there are no proper standards, like EXIF for photos. Premiere Pro does the same thing. Importing videos also gives the wrong capture date/time for many cameras.

[Mathias32515695vfub]

The problem is not that Lightroom Classic displays the wrong “Capture Date” after the import. After the import, the “Capture Date” is displayed correctly. The problem is that when exporting, the correct “Capture Date” is simply overwritten by the time of the export. Lightroom Classic overwrites the correct “Capture Date” in all important places in the metadata: Quicktime:CreateDate and XMP-xmp:CreateDate (if available; see ExifTool). After the export, there is no longer the correct recording date anywhere in the metadata.

[johnrellis]

There are indeed standards governing basic metadata in video: Quicktime, MP4, and XMP (which Adobe defined). 

But Adobe never finished LR's implementation of video back in LR 4, and LR makes no attempt to write any metadata from the catalog  into exported videos.

I very much doubt that Adobe will ever put more effort into LR Classic video. While waiting from them to do that before the next ice age, you could use the Run Any Command plugin and the free Exiftool utility to create a post-process action for video export that writes capture date and any other desired metadata into the video.

[JohanElzenga]

The problem is not that Lightroom Classic displays the wrong “Capture Date” after the import. After the import, the “Capture Date” is displayed correctly.

By @Mathias32515695vfub

Like I said, it depends on the camera. For my Sony cameras and my DJI drones the capture date is wrongly displayed by Lightroom Classic. It displays it in UTC rather than the local time. This is a known problem too. As described by John in this link, it is indeed not that there are no standards at all, but they are poorly written. It also seems that the export problem is not limited to Lightroom. If I edit a video in Premiere Pro, and import that video in Lightroom Classic, then the capture date that Lightroom Classic displays is the date/time that I exported the video from PP...

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

We've reviewed this and opened a bug with the Classic Team. Please follow this thread for updates as they are available. 

Thank you for your report.