convert obsolete video and preserve keywords

[scooter]

Operating System:Win 8 Home premium
Exact Lightroom Version (Help menu > System Info): 5.7.1

PROBLEM: Old video entries (in obsolete MOV format) have keywords associated with them. I want to import new versions of those videos ( transcoded to MP4 format) and attach the keywords to those new files.

I have hundreds of Quicktime ( *.MOV) videos that were imported way back when Quicktime was installed on my system before it was discontinued. Now, with the vulnerable Quicktime removed, I cannot play them via Lightroom, nor edit them. I also cannot import the few stragglers that I never got around to importing.

I have used ffmpeg to create *.mp4 versions and want to import those to Lightroom. Works great on a few test files.

1) Is there a way to export or extract the filenames and keywords of the obsolete files? I'm thinking an output list like:
c:\masterImages\2015\x.MOV keyword1, keyword2, ...
c:\masterImages\2015\y.MOV keyworda, keywordb, ...
etc
a list like that would at least make it easier to go find the files in lightroom and manually copy the keywords ... but FOR THE BIG WIN :
2) is there some utility or maybe a db interface that I could use to insert the keywords? So I could do (1) to extract and (2) to insert? Like:
magicInsert.exe c:\masterImages\2015\x.MP4 keyword1, keyword2, ...
magicInsert.exe c:\masterImages\2015\y.MP4 keyworda, keywordb, ...
etc

Thanks !

 

[clee01l]

I think I would import the converted MP4 format video into LR alongside the MOV video. Then using the Synchronize Metadata function, I would synchronize the MP4 file with the MOV file. Later you can delete the MOV file.

 

[scooter]

I think I would import the converted MP4 format video into LR alongside the MOV video. Then using the Synchronize Metadata function, I would synchronize the MP4 file with the MOV file. Later you can delete the MOV file.

Thanks! I tried that and it definitely helps, much better than cut & paste of keywords.

But ... I dont see any way to make the files "align" .... say I've got 2 MOV files, x.MOV , with keyword1 and y.MOV with keyword2 .... I want to end up with x.MP4 with keyword1 and y.MP4 with keyword2 .

As far as I can tell, since the keywords are different, I have to select X.MOV and x.MP4 , sync, the select y.MOV and y.MP4, sync .... one operation per file pair.
If I select all the files then sync, I wind up with all the files having all the keywords - x.MOv, x.MP4, y.MOV, y.MP4 all have both keyword1 and keyword2

The MOV files dont matter, of course, I'm going to delete them.

That's better than not having *any* keywords in my MP4 files. Better to have some false positives ( where I search for keyword1 and get y.MP4 included in the result) than to not find any of the files that are tagged with the keyword.

I've got about 1800 files, so ... any other tips would still be welcome

But this is a helpful tip, I'm going to start working it!!

 

[clee01l]

I can't think of any way to batch copy metadata. It is strictly a source to target although you can have multiple targets to one source.

 

[johnbeardy]

My Syncomatic plugin copies metadata between pairs of files with matching filenames.