P: Reproducible spurious "Metadata file needs to be updated"

[John R Ellis]

Many people have complained about spurious "Metadata file needs to be updated" icons appearing on thumbnails in Library mode. That has happened to me off and on for a year with LR 3. I now have a small 16-image catalog for which this happens repeatedly. No matter how many times I select all the thumbnails and do Metadata > Save Metadata To File, the needs-updating icons reappear very quickly, usually within seconds. The metadata is getting written to the files correctly -- it's just that LR doesn't think it has.

The test catalog was created with LR 3.5RC on Windows 7 by exporting from my main catalog (also exhibiting the problem).

Adobe, you can download the zipped folder containing the complete catalog and images from:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21811200/bugg... (111 MB)

Please let me know if you download it, so I can free up my Dropbox space.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Yes, this happens to me all the time; I thought I was going nuts and finally decided it wasn't worth tracking metadata changes. It's a pity.

[areohbee]

Just because this happens to you does not mean you aren't going nuts... ;-}

[Bec Sowada]

Thanks for reporting it. A bug has been logged.

[John R Ellis]

Thanks Becky. Would it be possible to copy the .zip file into the bug report, so I can free up the space in my Dropbox account?

[Bec Sowada]

Yes, I've successfully downloaded the zip file, you can remove it from your dropbox account.

[John R Ellis]

Thanks.

[Babar_e]

I Noticed a while ago that , if you have metadata (caption) with a new line charcter that was added in a different software, by hitting the ENTER key then the file metadat seems to always be out of sync, very annoying.
I had to stop using new line in the captions for this very reason.
Regards

[John R Ellis]

The images in the test catalog all have newlines in their captions, but the captions were entered from LR, not with external software.

[_ceroni]

As I reported in another thread on this forum, another symptom of what seems to be the same underlying problem is that every time the Lr catalog is optimized several metadata randomly changes from "up to date" to "has been changed". I'm absolutely sure the photos haven't been changed in any way so I guess it's a bug with the optimization routine in Lr.
PS: none of the images have captions.

[_ceroni]

I've noticed that every time the Lr catalog is optimized several metadata randomly changes from "up to date" to "has been changed". I'm absolutely sure the photos haven't been changed in any way so I guess it's a bug with the optimization routine in Lr. It's quite annoying since there is no practical way to specifically search for the ones that are marked as changed (down arrow). Has anyone experienced this problem?

[John R Ellis]

Here's a clumsy workaround for the bug with captions containing newlines, which triggers the spurious "Metadata file needs to be updated":

Use Exiftool to set the metadata fields storing the caption:

exiftool.exe -xmp:description= -iptc:caption-abstract= -exif:imagedescription=a myfile.jpg

Wait until the metadata-conflict badge appears on the thumbnail. Click on it and click Overwrite when asked. Unfortunately, I must do this one image at a time -- if I try to select multiple such images and do Overwrite, the symptoms remain.

[Bec Sowada]

Can you try this again with the new Lightroom 3.6 version? it's available on adobe.com or use "Check for Updates" in the Lightroom help menu.

[John R Ellis]

Becky,

LR 3.6 seems to have addressed the specific issue I originally posted -- I can Read Metadata From File and Save Metadata To File for captions containing newlines, and the spurious "Metadata needs to be updated" no longer appears. Excellent.

However, the related issue of newlines in captions not being displayed properly on Windows still exists:

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

Thanks.

[John R Ellis]

In LR 4.1, I was still getting files with spurious Metadata Status "Has been changed". Turns out these files had carriage-return / newline pairs (ctrl-m, ctrl-j) in their captions in the catalog, left over from LR 3.

To eliminate the spurious "has been changed", I did the following:

1. Select all photos with the "has been changed" metadata status.

2. Metadata > Save Metadata To File (wait until it's finished). Now the files have captions with just newline characters in them (ctrl-j).

3. Select all photos with the "has been changed" metadata status.

4. Metadata > Read Metadata From File.