Writing Changes into XMP is slow

[Dave Eagle]

Just updating a handful of images, and go to quit out of Lightroom, and I get ' Writing Metdata Changes into XMP. Please wait until the process is complete".

This is taking forever, updated maybe 5 images, and now I have to wait 10-15 minutes for Metadata changes to complete. This isnt the normal , 'writing changes you can quit/cancel and you will not lose data, this is different, the only option is to 'Stop'.

What will happen if I update a lot of images, or try and apply keywords to a lot of images?

M1 Mac, Monterey, 32GB, Catalogue on SSD, Images on NAS (over cable).

[DdeGannes]

Have you updated to the latest release of LrC 13.0.1?

[Dave Eagle]

Hi Denis, following your post I have upgraded to 13.0.1 so thanks for that.

My original proble with the Keyword list being absent repeated itself for c.4 minutes, and on quitting, the XMP still being written warning is the old one, 'Adobe Lightroom is not finished writing metadata changes into XMP, do you still want to quit? you will not lose any data idf you decide to do so.

However, thats a prolonged metadata write for a single image edit........something is seriously wrong with this upgrade....

[Dave Eagle]

Hi Dennis a few more edits in, another 6 images, and the 'Still writing Metadata' message is back, so no change from the 13.0.0 version.

[Flashpuppy]

Yup, same issue here after upgrading to LR Classic v13. Ryzen 9 3900x RTX3080 32GB RAM, 2 TB NVMe SSD

[jbinco]

Same issue and same setup.  Immediately after the last Lightroom update I got the same message about updating XMP and assumed it was due to the update so allowed it to run . . . an run  . . . and run.  After 24 hours it still hadn't finished so I quit.  Next exit of LR did the same thing but eventually XMP updates finished and LR exited.  Now several days and several reboots and app start/shutdown cycles later, I'm getting a similar message with only an option to "Stop".  The most recent Lightroom session included an upload of ~100 images and only edits on one.  This is absurd.   Clearly Adobe instroduced a bug in the last "update". 

[jbinco]

Found a suggestion in another thread which seems to have fixed this issue for me. 

1. Disable writing metadata to xmp temporarily.
2. Filter entire catalog on "metadata status" and look for anything not "up to date".
3. Resolve your conflicts and retry wrting the metadata.
4. Re-enable writing to xmp
5. That allowed me to close Lightroom without it hanging on the xml writing.

I had "changed on disk", "conflict detected" and "unknown".  The "conflict detected" message is baffling to me as I don't know what other app could possibly have touched these files.  All of them were years old and I hadn't touched them in a long time.  I to "overwrite settings" although I frankly have no idea exactly what that did.  I had no edits that I recalled or cared about on those images.  There were no XMP's in the folders so there were apparently no previous edits.

The "changed on disk" error seems to have been partially due to read-only files.  Other surrounding files in the effected folders were not read only and I don't know how a few files got that way.  I also don't understand why the native image file being read only impaired Lightroom from writing data to XMP files.

The "unknown" set were all .mov video files.  Lightroom offered no option to fix these.  They have been in the catalog for years over multiple version updates without issue.  I took no action on them.

[Dave Eagle]

Thanks for this, I tried the metadata filter above, and 'corrected' all the errant images, but low and behold today I am back to watching 'Writing Metadata Changes into XMP. Please wait until the process is complete.' .......2.8%. It seems that any time you go back into your images and LRC recreates the previews, you are back with a load of spurious metadata updates. Only guessing, but it seems LRC holds off making these changes until you quit the application. Its a definite bug  introduced by this latest upgrade, a complete pain in the rear.

[Flashpuppy]

Agreed. I can't believe how slow and clunky LR Classic is. It would be nice if Adobe spent some R&D money on updating the codebase instead of boosting shareholder returns.

[Dave Eagle]

One other thought, I just 'stopped' the XMP update and quit LRC. Restarted, and LRC starts updating the XMPs again some 150 files, but this time pretty quickly, and I was able then to quit LRC with out issue.

[slipstream3d]

I had a similar experience after the upgrade to v13. It said it was saving XMP for 27,000-odd photos in the status indicator in the top left of the UI but the number never went down. I started fiddling with settings and I changed something that prompted the program to want to restart, and I got shown that window with only the "Stop" button.

I got fed up after a while and clicked stop, the program restarted itself finally, and then the "Saving XMP to x files" indicator in the top left status thing actually started going down.

[jbinco]

You need to disable writing metadata tp xmp while you clean up your files.  Then re-enable it afterwards.

[slipstream3d]

This wasn't neccessary at all for me. I just quit with it stuck, pressed stop once, restarted, and everything works pefectly. It wrote out all 27000 changes in a few minutes.

[RussT-TN]

Same for me.  I've gotten this message in several versions of Lrc when closing the application.  I once let it run for 2+hours and it never finished updating.  Now, I just click the "stop" button, close and restart Lrc and everything seems to work OK - haven't seen any loss of data or missing adjustments.  Maybe I'm just blind , , ,

[Lufthansen]

Not sure how Mac handles it, but on my windows environment, I do huge batches of metadata edits. Because of the sluggish behavior of Lightroom, I have resolved to work on my image storage with several computers simultaneously. That means that the XMP and changes have to be written into the files to not get conflicting versions. Unfortunately, Lightroom gives little to no info on the progress in saving the metadata (currently looking at 324 images having their metadata - xmp - saved. 12 minutes going on forever and still not finished). Be it because Lightroom crashes or I have to restart due to deadline approaching ( a word Adobe does not seem to understand), I frequently have to restart the app, and just as often do I discover that parts of the files that I worked on did not get their metadata updated as instructed. This in spite of Lightroom assuring that the metadata will not be lost but saved later. I have asked Adobe numerous times for a solution, as this drives me nuts. I do not know what is worse; to have the app crashing and having to start again, or to have to restart the app and then start the detective work of finding out which images got the metadata written and which images did not. It is maddening, and it has been going on for years (at least 2011, on different computers) without Adobe providing a solution, workaround or suggestion of what causes it. Last session with support suggested read/write privileges being reset to read-only somehow. but we still don't know why.  

[Lufthansen]

....about the sluggishness of Lightroom (in case someone doubt it): 83 seconds from starting to paste a set of keywords into Lightroom until it actually registers and I can save my changes. For 3 images. 14 % of CPU utilized by Lightroom. Still waiting for the above mentioned 324 images to have their metadata saved.

[DdeGannes]

@Lufthansen  Stated.

" Not sure how Mac handles it, but on my windows environment, I do huge batches of metadata edits. Because of the sluggish behavior of Lightroom, I have resolved to work on my image storage with several computers simultaneously.

Comment, Lightroom Classic is a single user application and can only have one Lightroom Catalog open at any point in time. In addition Lightroom reads and writes to the Lightroom Catalog file by default and the Metadata and edits are written as you work this is a primary function. There is an option to "Automatically write Metadata to the file" this function in a secondary function and takes place during idle time. So This option may get delayed if LrC is busy writing to the Catalog. It also begs the questions do the multiple computers access the same Catalog? Where are the image files located? Where are the Catalogs located?

 That means that the XMP and changes have to be written into the files to not get conflicting versions. Unfortunately, Lightroom gives little to no info on the progress in saving the metadata (currently looking at 324 images having their metadata - xmp - saved. 12 minutes going on forever and still not finished). Be it because Lightroom crashes or I have to restart due to deadline approaching ( a word Adobe does not seem to understand), I frequently have to restart the app, and just as often do I discover that parts of the files that I worked on did not get their metadata updated as instructed. This in spite of Lightroom assuring that the metadata will not be lost but saved later. I have asked Adobe numerous times for a solution, as this drives me nuts. I do not know what is worse; to have the app crashing and having to start again, or to have to restart the app and then start the detective work of finding out which images got the metadata written and which images did not. It is maddening, and it has been going on for years (at least 2011, on different computers) without Adobe providing a solution, workaround or suggestion of what causes it. Last session with support suggested read/write privileges being reset to read-only somehow. but we still don't know why.  

[Lufthansen]

catalog on dedicated internal nvme ssd pcie4. Thumbnails and previews too. Image files split across 4 different sata raid5 and nvme ssd pcie4, all internal. No catalog or thumbnails on these. OS runs on separate, dedicated nvme ssd. No catalog or previews here either. ram varies for the different computers; 40-128gb, and cpu goes from 1.3 to 3.8 ghz. Graphics cards are all up to snuff. For me, Lr runs slow whether the images are on nas, on another network drive or locally stored. It makes little to no difference.