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Nikon raw video NEV as sidecar

New Here ,
Nov 02, 2025 Nov 02, 2025

I've recently started shooting video in Nikon's N-RAW format, which also creates an MP4 file as a preview.  I've been experimenting with using LRC as my asset management even for video since I'm heavily invested in it for managing my stills, and I'm often shooting both stills and video so keeping them together in the same collection is helpful. 

 

Since LRC doesn't really understand NEV files, my plan was to manage the MP4 files in LRC and use some shell scripts to move things where their corresponding MP4 files ended up.  However I accidentally discovered that Lightroom was marking my NEV files as sidecar files, so if I moved the MP4 file, it moved the NEV file with it.  This was awesome and just what I wanted, and made my life easier.  Then all of a sudden it stopped working.  I didn't update LRC (that I can remember) nor did I change my workflow (that I can think of).  

 

Now it seems to just never work, and googling seems to indicate it probably shouldn't have worked to begin with.   I would love to have this work.  This morning I updated to LRCv15.0 and tried again just to make sure it still wasn't working, and it didn't work.  However if I go back to some of the older files where it did work, it does still show the NEV as a sidecar:

 

Screenshot 2025-11-02 at 10.53.33 AM.png

 

If anyone knows how I can get this work, that would be great.   In case it's relevant, this is on MacOS 15.5.

 

And in a tangentially-relevant vein, if we could somehow get a way to get the video capture time to account for timezone, that would be great.  My videos keep ending up with the wrong date if the time without timezone correction lands on a different day.  I've seen others complain about that, but so far haven't seen any resolution.

 

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LEGEND , Nov 02, 2025 Nov 02, 2025

LR's rules for what it considers to be a "sidecar" are mysterious, undocumented, and have changed over the years. I've never tried to fully reverse-engineer them. In general, though, LR considers any file with the same base name but an unrecognized extension as a "sidecar" for the purposes of the Metadata panel.

 

Just now I've noticed that such "sidecars" don't get recognized on import (as you observed) but will be recognized after you do Library > Synchronize Folder on the containing folder. For

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LEGEND ,
Nov 02, 2025 Nov 02, 2025

LR's rules for what it considers to be a "sidecar" are mysterious, undocumented, and have changed over the years. I've never tried to fully reverse-engineer them. In general, though, LR considers any file with the same base name but an unrecognized extension as a "sidecar" for the purposes of the Metadata panel.

 

Just now I've noticed that such "sidecars" don't get recognized on import (as you observed) but will be recognized after you do Library > Synchronize Folder on the containing folder. For example, I put a .mp4, .txt, .nev, and .pdf into a folder (all with the same basename) and imported the .mp4 -- no sidecars are displayed:

johnrellis_0-1762132383692.png

 

But I then selected the folder in the Folders panel and did Library > Synchronize Folder, and the .txt, .nev, and .pdf show up as sidecars:

johnrellis_1-1762132504906.png

 

 

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New Here ,
Nov 02, 2025 Nov 02, 2025

John - you are so awesome!!!!  I just tried that and it worked!  I do recall at some point having to do a synchronize folder on one of my video folders and that must have been why some of my videos had the NEVs as sidecars.  This is great, and such a help.  It would be even better if worked on import, but I at least have a workable solution.  Thanks again!!

 

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LEGEND ,
Nov 02, 2025 Nov 02, 2025
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"It would be even better if worked on import"

 

Since none of this is documented, it's not clear what's the original intended behavior, and thus whether Adobe considers this a "bug" or not.  So I think there's no point in filing a formal bug report.

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