P: Wrong GPS coordinates on videos

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I recently came across an issue with the GPS coordinates of my videos in Lightroom Classic 10.3.

I have my camera paired with my smartphone so that all my photos and videos have GPS coordinates.

For my photos, Lightroom Classic works exactly as expected. The coordinates are correctly read from the EXIF data and I can see on the map more or less exactly where each shot was taken.

It's a different story with videos, however. I just recently imported a batch of 9 videos. When I opened the map module, all 9 videos were in exactly the same location. (This location was not on my route but it wasn't too far away either - about 50 KM from where I was walking. But it's somewhere I've never been before.)

Investigating further, I opened some of the video files in EXIF tool to check the GPS coordinates. Each of the nine videos in fact had unique coordinates and, after double-checking in Google Earth, I found that these coordinates were accurate. This leads me to believe that this is an issue with Lightroom Classic reading the GPS coordinates from the EXIF data. Furthermore, I also noticed that the seemingly random location Lightroom assigned to my videos was in a different format to the one normally used by the camera.

I have not experienced any such issues with photos. Lightroom seems to correctly read the coordinates for the photos. Even when importing a batch of both photos and videos, the photos have the correct GPS coordinates while the videos are grouped together somewhere random. This is all using the same camera (Fuji XT4).

I've already posted about this issue in this thread, where another forum member was able to corroborate my findings. This indeed seems to be a Lightroom bug.

You can find a sample video here to help you re-create the bug.

Please let me know if I can provide any further information.

[SebAndrei]

Hello,

I recently came across an issue with the GPS coordinates of my videos in Lightroom Classic.

I have my camera paired with my smartphone so that all my photos and videos have GPS coordinates.

For my photos, Lightroom Classic works exactly as expected. The coordinates are correctly read from the EXIF data and I can see on the map more or less exactly where each shot was taken.

It's a different story with videos, however. I just recently imported a batch of 9 videos. When I opened the map module, all 9 videos were in exactly the same location. (This location was not on my route but it wasn't too far away either - about 50 KM from where I was walking. But it's somewhere I've never been before.)

Investigating further, I opened some of the video files in EXIF tool to check the GPS coordinates. Each video in fact had unique coordinates and, after double-checking in Google Earth, I found that these coordinates were accurate. This leads me to believe it's an issue with Lightroom Classic reading the GPS coordinates from the EXIF data. Furthermore, I also noticed that the seemingly random location Lightroom assigned to my videos was in a different format to the one normally used by the camera.

I have not experienced any such issues with photos. Lightroom seems to correctly read the coordinates for the photos. Even when importing a batch of both photos and videos, the photos have the correct GPS coordinates while the videos are grouped together somewhere random. This is all using the same camera (Fuji XT4).

Has anyone else noticed this or had similar issues with video GPS coordinates? Any ideas what the issue might be or what I can do to fix it?

Thanks!

[John R Ellis]

Please upload a sample video to Dropbox or similar and post the sharing link here (don't use Youtube, since it will discard the metadata).  I can then see if this is an instance of a known bug or some other problem and perhaps suggest a workaround.

[SebAndrei]

Thanks for getting back to me John.

I've uploaded one of my videos to OneDrive here.

Please let me know if this helps or if you need anything else.

[SebAndrei]

Sorry, please use this link instead.

[John R Ellis]

The forum software won't let me reply to you with details. I'll try send you a private message instead.

[John R Ellis]

It's clearly a Lightroom bug. Notice how Lightroom 10.3 incorrectly displays the coordinates of the imported video:

60" (60 seconds) isn't valid in degrees/minutes/seconds format -- you can't have 60".

I've poked inside the file, and it appears the coordinates are recorded in an industry-standard format but different than how most apps record coordinates.  For Quicktime video, popular cameras and apps use the Quicktime metadata field GPSCoordinates, whereas this video is using the EXIF GPS metadata fields.  That's probably why this bug hasn't been discovered until now.

Please post a bug report in the official Adobe feedback forum, where Adobe wants all bug reports and feature suggestions:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/

Be sure to include the first ten lines of the menu command Help > System Info. Provide all the details, including the link to the sample video, rather than linking back to this thread -- experience shows that Adobe developers tend not to follow the links. Product developers read everything posted there, but rarely participate here, which is primarily a user-to-user forum.

To workaround the bug, remove the video from the catalog and use Exiftool to rewrite the GPS coordinates in a different internal representation:

exiftool "-gpslongitude<gpslongitude" "-gpslatitude<gpslatitude" DSCF3287.MOV 

Then reimport the video.

[John R Ellis]

My reply made it finally, after many tries and three browsers over 12 hours.

[SebAndrei]

Thanks for looking into this issue.

I had suspected the issue lies with lightroom but it's good to have that corroborated. As I mentioned, the GPS coordinates for photos work just fine using the same camera.

I will follow your instructions and post this issue to the forum you indicated.

[COBill]

Why are you using a photo editing app for videos? You should be using Premiere or...

[John R Ellis]

For the sample video, Exiftool displays the coordinates as:

46 deg 4' 25.18" N, 23 deg 34' 25.97" E

while LR displays them incorrectly as:

46°0'60"  23°0'60" 

The 60" clearly indicates a bug in LR.

[Sumeet_Choudhury]

Hey, 

Thanks for reporting this issue. We shall look into it further.

Regards,

Sumeet

[witkacy]

The bug is still there for mp4s from a Pixel phone in Lightroom 11.1…

[John R Ellis]

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

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-wrong-gps-coordinates-on-videos/idi-p/124201...

[SebAndrei]

Hello,

Just wanted to say that this issue is still present in Lightroom Classic CC 11.4.1.

Is there any indication on when it might be fixed?

Best regards,

Sebastian

[John R Ellis]

At the bottom of the first post, Adobe has marked the bug as "Investigating", which means they're aware of it. Unfortunately, Adobe almost never says when a bug will be fixed. From Adobe's post, How do I write a bug report:

"ETAs for any bug fixes are not available in advance. The primary thread for each bug will be updated when a fix is released. "

[John R Ellis]

Also, be sure to click Upvote at the top-right of the first post.  That will make it a bit more likely Adobe will prioritize a fix.