LrC does not sort video files according to capture date and time

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
June 21, 2024
2 replies
1520 views

I have both RAW and Video files in my LrC catalog. The RAW files sort as expected when selecting "Sort: Capture Time". But with Video files they do not sort according to the "Capture Time" metadata but according to the "Date Time" metadata. For my RAW files all the date time metadata fields (there are several) contain the same data, which is the capture date and time. But video metadata is a mess! I won't delve into all the problems with date and time metadata in video files, but "Capture Time" metadata and "Data Time" metadata are not the same. Consequently sorting on "Date Time" metadata does not sort according to "Capture Time".

The bug is that when sort according to "Capture Time" is selected, the resultant order is according the "Data Time" metadata which is the wrong order.

Windows

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johnrellis

Legend

Building on Johan's comment, a couple of the common issues with video capture time:

- Videos from many cameras will have their capture dates shifted by the time zone offset from UTC where the photo was taken:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-handle-video-capture-times-for-cameras-obeying-the-quicktime-mp4-standard/idi-p/14007948

- The Mac Photos app substitutes the time of export for capture time when it exports videos (unless you use Export Unmodified). Other video apps simply discard video metadata.

- When LR doesn't recognize any capture-date field in the metadata, it will use the file's last-modified date. Worse, each time that last-modified date changes, LR changes the capture date in the catalog! And LR will sort the videos inconsistently with the times shown under the thumbnails and in the Metadata panel. (The EXIF DateTime field is often but not always the same as the file's last-modified date.)

In general, you often have to use the menu command Metadata > Edit Capture Time to correct the capture date of videos. Once you do that, LR will behave consistently.

DClark064Author

Inspiring

I always us Metadata > Edit Capture Time to correct the video metadata from Zulu to the correct time zone. In that case it is easy to correct lots of files quickly. In this case the Date Time metadata has been changed by another program that stabilized the video. The Capture Time metatdata is still correct. In order to correct this error I would need to individually correct about 420 files one-by-one, unless there is a way to either get LrC to use the correct metadata when sorting by Capture Time (i.e. the Capture Time metadata) or some way to set the Date Time metadata to agree with Capture Time. Is there a way to do that? Maybe someone who is good a writting LrC plugins could do something.

Regardless, LrC is using the wrong metatdata. That's a bug. It needs to be fixed.

johnrellis

Legend

I did more testing and what I find is that the sorting is by capture date/time unless there are some stacked files. I have not been able to figure out what metadata is used for stacked video files. I expected that stacks should be sorted by the capture date/time of the file that is on the top of the stack. I find that is sometimes the case but sometimes not the case. Sometimes they stack according to other data/time metadata. When I checked sorting before, the sequences I checked all sorted by date/time not capture data/time. I spent quite a bit more time experimenting but now I cannot find a consistent pattern. I am looking at all the date/time metadata that LrC will present and cannot find anything that works for all the stacks.

At this point I have decided that using LrC to manage video files is more trouble than it's worth. My problem is that I have not found a better alternative. Out of necessity I am using Sony Catalyst Prepare, but it's got big problems too. At least it will play all the video files regardless of the codex and shows all the metadata.

I've diagnosed many, many problems with metadata and video metadata in particular -- I know more about how LR handles metadata than the Adobe engineers. If you share one or more of the problem videos here as described above, I can most likely diagnose the issue and slot it into an existing bug report or file a new one.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

There are lots of known problems with video capture dates, due to poor video standards.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

DClark064Author

Inspiring

I agree that video metatdata is a mess. In this case the problem is with LrC. When it sorts by "Capture Time" it uses the wrong metadata. This is not a problem with video standards (which are plentiful), it's a problem with LrC. It's a "bug" that needs to be fixed.

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