P: Export large Sequences via simple custom export plugin crashes Lightroom 11.4

[Gunther Wegner]

This issue was reported to me by multiple LRTimelapse users that use my LRTExport Lightroom Plugin to export their timelapses.

Symptom: Exporting sequences of multiple thousand images via a custom export plugin consistantly makes Lightroom Classic 11.4 (and later prereleases) crash. This happens on Windows and Mac machines.

There is no problem, with shorter sequences of several hundreds of images, as it appears.

I could reproduce the reports from my users on my machine (Windows 10), latest NVidia drivers, etc.

To exclude the chance of any programming errors in my rather complex LRTExport plugin, I coded a very simple, basic custom export plugin. This simple plugin, also crashes when used to export several thousand images, you can use it to reproduce the issue:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4om4748izdlaw1y/Gunther_Wegner_SimpleExport.lrplugin.zip?dl=1

The more images I export, the faster and more often the crash happens. With 4000 images for example, often after 10 images Lightroom closes. In some cases it sends a crash report (which I submitted under my info(at)LRTimelapse email address) in some cases it just closes.

Another scenario that I observed a couple of times is that the plugin stops logging and updating the progressbar but the export actually continues in background (filling up the export folder). Then obviously you also can't stop the export via the X button.

I can reproduce these issues in 100% of all cases when exporting several thousand images.

I went back to Lightroom Classic 11.3.1, where everything works fine in the same scenario.

I already spent two days in analyzing this issue and I'm willing to help to provide more information, if I can. It is very important for the timelapse community that this issue gets resolved asap!

Thank you in advance,

Gunther Wegner

LRTimelapse.com

[mathiasrh]

Hello Adobe, 

as you were made aware of this issue, it's surprising that we haven't heard of you for a month. This bug is absolutely major and renders a vital function of the subscription software useless. 

Please give an update here including the eta when this issue will be fixed.

[johnrellis]

Adobe very rarely provides estimates of when a bug will be fixed, unfortunately.  This status of this bug is marked "Investigating" (at the bottom of the first post), which means Adobe has formally acknowledged the bug and assigned it a tracking number in their internal system.   It has 28 votes, which is much more than a typical bug report here, though based on past bugs probably not enough to induce Adobe to release an emergency patch release (e.g. 11.4.2).

LR releases every 8 weeks on average, so we might expect to see LR 11.5 the week of August 9 or the next week.

[jahdou]

I have problems with the new Lightroom version 11.4 and higher with the load of all CPU cores on my Threadripper Windows machine. Goes on forever when I export a sequence out. With version 11.3.1 everything still runs smoothly.

[H-H.Schlicht@web.de]

Hallo, Ich bekomme beim Export von Timelapse-Sequenzen, die ich zuvor in LRTimelapse bearbeitet habe  folgende Fehlermeldung in lightroom Classic:

Export nicht möglich: ein interner Fehler ist aufgetreten: bad argument #1 to '?' (string expected, got nil)

Ich benutze ein Macbook Air (M1, 2020), Chip Apple M1, 16GB, MacOS Monterey, MacVersion 12.5,

Lightroom Classic Version 11.4.1, CameraRaw 14.4.1

Hat jemand schon einmal diesen Fehler gehabt?

Gruß HH Schlicht

[johnrellis]

Are you using an export plugin to do the export (e.g. the one from LRTimelapse)?

[H-H.Schlicht@web.de]

Ja, genau.

[H-H.Schlicht@web.de]

Ja, ich nutze das Lrtimelapse-Export Plug-in. 

[johnrellis]

LR 11.4 introduced a bug that affects exports of very large numbers of photos, including with the LRTExport plugin:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-export-large-sequences-via-simple-custom-exp...

The only workaround I've seen is to roll back to LR 11.3. You might contact LRTimelapse to see if they have alternate workrounds.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with the existing bug report:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-export-large-sequences-via-simple-custom-exp...

[H-H.Schlicht@web.de]

OK! Das war es wohl! Habe ein Rollbach zur Version 13.1 gemacht und es scheint zu funktionieren. Danke für den Tipp!

Gruß HH Schlicht

[hibaxxvi]

Guten Morgen,

beim Export erhalte ich folgende Fehlermeldung:

Ein interner Fehler ist aufgetreten: bad argument #1 to '?' (string expected, got nil)

Ich habe bereits einen neuen Katlalog erstellt - leider ohne erfolg

Hat jemand einen Tipp?

[johnrellis]

Google Translation: "Export failed. When exporting I get the following error message:

An internal error has occurred: bad argument #1 to '?' (string expected, got nil)"

Are you exporting using a third-party plugin, for example LRTimelapse or the Alamy plugin?

[DdeGannes]

Removed not relevant to the thread.

[hibaxxvi]

Yes, I use LRT Timelapse.

[johnrellis]

The LRTimelapse author has filed a bug report, which has been acknowledged by Adobe. The only workaround I've seen is to roll back to LR 11.3. You might contact the LRTimelapse author to see if they have alternate workarounds.

[johnrellis]

Moderators,  @Rikk Flohr: Photography,  please merge with the existing bug report:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-export-large-sequences-via-simple-custom-exp...

[DdeGannes]

See if the issue described in the link below has anything to do with what you are experiencing.

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/known-issues.html

Just a thought to check.

[Lightatwork1]

I downloaded LR 11.5 for Mac and am still experiencing the same/similar issues while exporting large sequences using the LRTimelapse export. This happens both on an Intel machine (iMac Pro 10-core) and ARM machine (Macbook Pro M1 Max). It happens both when using Graphics Acceleration but also with Graphics Accelerations switched off.

When I export the same sequences in LR 11.3.1, not a single issue comes up.

So for me, the 11.5 update did not solve the issue described in this thread FOR MAC.

[Bas_Timewriters]

The problem with Windows machines is not completely solved in my opinion:

A normal single folder exports okay for now, however, much slower. Since  I turned off the graphic card support for export in Lightroom it goes a bit faster but nowhere near how fast Lightroom 11.3.1 does the Job.

But with multiple folder export with LRTimelapse (in this case couple of folders with 1600 images in them) - after checking folders and checking sequences Lightroom goes in a state of 'not-responding'.

It does that after it has made all the temp folders for the export, but before exporting the first image.

After two restarts I decided to see if it would come by this 'not-responding' and after 5 or 10 minutes it began working again.
This I can reproduce every time now. It just goes in a state of not-responding for a long time.

When I revert back to Lightroom 11.3.1 there is no problem at all.

Lightroom Classic version: 11.5 [ 202208080927-8a575c91 ]
Operating system: Windows 10 - Business Edition
Version: 10.0.22000
Application architecture: x64
System architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 16
Processor speed: 3,6GHz

Graphics Processor Info:
DirectX: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (31.0.15.1694)

[willthisnamedo]

Well I thought all was ok with the latest update but I just went to export 4613 images from CR3 on my internal SSD to and external HDD as compressed DNG files (not resized) and Lightroom rolled over and closed. No error reporting option, just closed. I restarted the process and it completed this time around.

Truth be told the crashing out has happened less with this latest release. I've edited two other weddings since and there weren't any issues.

[cgtway]

When rendering timelapse frames out of Lightroom 11.5, I am now getting export errors with the message: "no file name returned". Other LRTimelapse users are getting this error as well (for example: https://forum.lrtimelapse.com/Thread-export-errors-no-filename-returned?pid=52859)

MacOS 12.4 (M1 Mac Mini)
LRT 6.1.2
LR 11.5
Camera Raw 14.5

I'm getting this in one out of 3 exports, with 1 to 3 files per sequence failing to render (whether I batch export multiple sequences, or single sequences). When I re-export the same sequences, sometimes the export is successful, sometimes not (and when not, I get the same error, but on different files).

If I can't come up with an efficient workaround, I'll be downgrading back to LR 11.3.1 (again 😞 

[johnrellis]

@Gunther Wegner, is this bad behavior of export with LR/Timelapse still occurring in LR 12?

[Gunther Wegner]

Regardig the crashes that originated this post, I didn't get any more bug reports yet from my users, so it seems to be ok now.

However especially with the "Use GPU for Export" option there seem to be quite some issues. On many systems it seems to be way slower than the CPU based export. That's why currently it seems to be better to turn that off.

[johnrellis]

"Regarding the crashes that originated this post, I didn't get any more bug reports yet from my users, so it seems to be ok now."

Good to know, thanks for the update.

"However especially with the "Use GPU for Export" option there seem to be quite some issues. On many systems it seems to be way slower than the CPU based export. That's why currently it seems to be better to turn that off."

Adobe recommends at least 8 GB VRAM for that option. I've observed on my Macbook Pro 2019, with only 4 GB VRAM, that I get a modest 15% speedup.  I think LR is supposed to disable the option when the computer has less than 8 GB.   I wonder how many people reporting bad performance have less than 8 GB?

[mathiasrh]

I personally can confirm this issues with the GPU based export. I am on a MacBook Pro with M1 64GB and exporting a sequence with 2000 files can take about 4.5 hours.