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Question

Video playback performance in Lightroom Classic is choppy, stuttering, skipping, fails to playback

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
December 11, 2019
9 replies
7230 views

Video playback performance in Lightroom Classic CC is generally bad and usually degrades after attempting to playback a few videos. Playback is typically choppy, even with relatively lightweight HD files, and especially with UHD or 4K+ content. The video will often stutter when playing, sometimes skipping large sections of video, or playing at a low frame rate and other times completely failing to playback the visuals all while the audio finishes playing. Video in Lightroom Classic usually also appears very low quality when attemting to playback, usually playing at lower resolution with lots of jaggies / aliasing.

Lightroom Classic has advertised a lot of useful video tools (see: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/video-lightroom.html) that are nearly impossible to use properly due to its inability to playback video properly.

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brettc94048907

Known Participant

It is shameful that Adobe has done nothing to improve this for years, LR is unusable for video DAM, even on insanely powerful computers. It's useless. Simple freeware programs like VideoHubApp, written by one person, completely outperform LR, which again, is unusable for video and always has been. Doesn't matter if you have a Threadripper and 128gb ram and a 4080, it's useless. It's just disregard for the customer and the quality of the product.

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Bill Sprague

Community Expert

This is an old topic going back to 2019! So, I'm replying specifically to the single current post from brettc. If brettc is an experienced video creator, none of what I write will be new. Hopefully, what I write will be useful to those not used to using Lightroom Classic in a video workflow.

I have a i7 laptop with 16 GB of RAM and an NVIDA GPU. I use and enjoy Lightroom Classic video functions. Using it as a detail viewer is limited but improves as it creates previews in the background. There is a setting in preferences where you can increase the cache size.

I like it as a DAM because I shoot with hybrid cameras. My shooting is a mix of JPEGs, RAWs and 4K MP4s. Lightroom Classic facilitates moving all of them in an organized batch to my computer. "Scrubbing" the cached previews in the Library module works very well to isolate immediate deletes of unusable clips. It also facilitates creation of collections for a video project. Once a collection is built, using Export and (using As Original for a file type) to a new dedicated video project folder works well. It sets the stage for a project in Premier Pro, Premiere Elements or other NLE of choice. It makes it easy to edit with clip copies and manage video project.

If you need a clip review at the pixel peeping level, use Show in Explorer and use a dedicated clip player like VLC.

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brettc94048907

Known Participant

My post relates to the abysmal performance, not the functionality or where it fits in the workflow. The performance makes it unusable. It's always been that way and has never improved. It does exactly what the posters here describe. It can barely play and scrub even 1080p clips without lagging, stuttering and freezing, and it predictably become worse and worse to the point or quitting after 5 or 10 minutes. I have very fast hardware, and I've used LR since the day video support was introduced, on a wide variety of machines, and it's always been this way.

Stephen@LuksicMedia.com

Participant

Sometimes I use LRC as a DAM - for Photos at least, With so many still cameras shooting videos and clients expecting both stills and video, it is hard to manage everything in one application. I used KYNO, which also allowed me export a rough cut to Davinci Resolve. Bridge plays the movie files fine, but is not LRC. What do you use as an asset management tool for all your media?

exitstrategy

Participant

+1 here. This is a silly issue, Adobe. Repeatable bad UX across multiple spec'd out comps -- butter smooth playback in any other app/browser/etc.

You can do it! We believe in you!

johnrellis

Legend

Many have reported video playback problems since LR first implemented video in LR 4. It's pretty clear that Adobe doesn't care about it. See the workarounds I posted above:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/video-playback-performance-in-lightroom-classic-is-choppy-stuttering-skipping-fails-to-playback/m-p/10795962#M168697

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Cybercap

Participant

Exact same problem here more than a year later...

I have a late 2017 iMac maxed out with 32gb of ram and 8gb of gpu which LR says it can benefit from. My macOS is Big Sur and i have the latest version of LR classic. My video files are 4K clips at 30fps H.264 from a Dji Mavic air.
They import well but then everything from playback to smooth editing is unusable. Simple playback is choppy, freezes, jumps and seems to clog up the cpu with the "dynamiclinkmediaserver" process.
The playback head is a pain to move around and finalizing a short movie in slideshow is impossible (playback hangs at second clip most of the time).
An Adobe tech controlled my computer remotely to perform some checks and tests : reinstall old LR, disable gpu accel, start fresh catalog, increase permissions... without any success.

Still hoping Adobe will get this eventually fixed so we can at least build a basic movie from our footage

DdeGannes

Community Expert

As far as I am aware the only functions you can utilize with Video files is import and do simple management of the files.

If you wish to do simple play back its better to use the app available on you computer for this, if you wish to do specialized editing then you need an application for that purpose.

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

ShootingMountaineer

Participating Frequently

All I want to do is play a video file, nothing fancy. If I click "play" I just hear audio and the video doesn't move. If you can't playback a video, you shouldn't allow the user to import them. I'm not trying to do any edits, I just want to simply play the videos. I don't know what "the time available on your computer" means. I'm not trying to do specialized editing, I use Final Cut Pro X for that already.

ShootingMountaineer

Participating Frequently

Same issue here, it's dissapointing to have to open up every 4k video in finder, then open with VLC/Quicktime because LR is incapable of playing 4k video in the library, even on a powerful, fully-specced 15 inch Macbook Pro. Adobe, get some of your folks from the Primier team to help out and fix this!

johnrellis

Legend

Video has always been LR's stepchild, missing basic features and often performing poorly, with too many reports from users over the years of problematic playback and other bugs. While I use LR to catalog my videos, I gave up long ago trying to ensure smooth playback. Instead, I open the video in an external player (e.g. QuickTime on Mac). You can do that by right-clicking the thumbnail in Library and doing Show In Finder/Explorer, and then double-clicking the file in Finder/Explorer. You can make that more convenient by using the Open Directly plugin or the Open command of the Any File plugin to open the video in an external program, assigning a keyboard shortcut to the menu command.

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Sahil.Chawla

Adobe Employee

Hi there,

Welcome to the Adobe Community!

The video playback depends on the configuration of the system, could you please share the specifications of your computer?

Also, you may try optimizing the performance of Lightroom and see if it improves the video playback: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/lightroom-classic/kb/optimize-performance-lightroom.html

Please make sure that no other apps are running in the background.

Regards,
Sahil

lonelyspeckAuthor

Participating Frequently

None of these things help performance and this issue is a problem regardless of hardware specifications. I have an M1 Max Macbook Pro and Lightroom Classic is still useless for managing videos even after years of this issue being a problem.

ShootingMountaineer

Participating Frequently

Exact same system here, exact same problem. I have a catalog with lots of videos in it that I often have to force-quit because it gets so laggy. (SIDEBAR: I love your star photography work and channel BTW, I have learned a ton from it!)

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