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Known Participant
September 29, 2015

P: Sort by capture time should use filename when times are equal

  • September 29, 2015
  • 34 replies
  • 1934 views

When I bracket exposure or "motor drive" on my Pentax K-5 II, and sort the files by shutter press time, they do not show up in the right order. To see them in the right order I have to sort by filename (which breaks if I use two cameras or loop my counter past 9999).When I look at the exif data, capture time is only shown to a resolution of one second. What the software should do, when sorting by time, is if photos were taken in the same second, sort them by the index number in the filename.

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34 replies

Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
Community Manager
February 22, 2022

Updating Status

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
johnrellis
Legend
February 22, 2022

@Rikk Flohr: Photography, this bug has apparently been fixed and should marked as such. (It's easy to test -- take several pictures with the same capture date, change one of the file names, and observe that LR uses file name as a secondary sort.)

johnrellis
Legend
February 22, 2022

This bug appears to have been fixed at some point in the last many years. Now in LR 11.2, View > Sort > Capture Time sorts by file name when two photos have the same capture time.

johnrellis
Legend
April 30, 2017
As a less-than-ideal workaround, the Any Filter plugin now provides a command, Fix Burst Times, that finds bursts of photos having the same capture time and sets the photos' factional seconds to be increasing in the same order as their filenames, e.g. to .0001, .0002, .0003, etc. This properly orders the bursts in Library when sorting by capture time. 

It would much better if LR used filename as a second sort key, and even better if the recalcitrant manufacturers (Sony, Olympus, Pentax) simply set the fractional seconds in the metadata.
johnrellis
Legend
March 13, 2017
Also, in Library, do View > Sort > File Name to sort the images by filename rather than capture time.   If you're applying a custom renaming template, be sure to include the original file number in the new filename. 
johnrellis
Legend
March 13, 2017
I downloaded a number of sample Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II raw images from dpreview.com and verified that the camera isn't adding the fractional seconds to the capture time (as allowed by the EXIF standard and implemented by many manufacturers).  This aligns with the observation of Mark Levison above with his (unspecified) Olympus.  So:

1. File a bug report with Olympus.  In 2017, there's no reason any camera, especially a $2,000 camera, shouldn't record fractional seconds.  (Sony is also guilty.)

2. It would be trivial for LR to use filename as a secondary sort key when sorting by capture time. This would handle the common case of sorting bursts properly.
Participant
March 13, 2017


When I tried importing images shot with high-speed consecutive shooting, Lightroom CC mixed up the order of the images. Suppose the actual order of images is 1, 2, 3, ..., 10. Lightroom numbers these images, for example, in the following order: 3, 2, 1, 6, 5, 4, 10, 9, 8, 7. More specifically, I shot images of a person running (forward). If you slideshow the images in the order sequenced by Lightroom, the person will look as if she is running backward, and then suddenly leaps forward and starts running backward again.

I used an Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II to shoot these images. I wonder if this problem is specific to this model of camera or happens with other cameras as well.

How can I avoid this problem?
Sunil_Bhaskaran
Community Manager
Community Manager
February 19, 2017
Great.
Flint, let us know if you are able to reproduce the issue.
Thanks,
Sunil
Participant
February 18, 2017
Both Unstack and Remove from Stack work now. Not sure how to recreate the problem I had. I'll try it again when I have a big set of pics to try auto stack.
Participant
February 18, 2017
Seems to work now. Perhaps I was using "Remove from Stack" (wrongly thinking "Unstack" exapanded the stack?).