Import Importing videos – Lightroom ignores the capture time

[dfkotz]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic version: 11.1 [ 202112022200-7fd1f998 ]

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

I'm working to import a couple hundred old videos – but when I import them, LR ignores all the date/time metadata and assigns the date and time from the current date and time. I've seen many old threads about old bugs in LR, but none help me know how to convince LR 11.1 to correctly detect date/time metadata while importing videos. More context follows.

Some of the videos date back twenty years and have been through several format/codec transformations to bring them up to modern standards (m4v); much of the original metadata, if ever present, is long gone. I have personal knowledge of the original date for each clip, so I used the following approach to fill in every metadata tag I could imagine:
t="2001:06:03:12:00:00" f=somefile.m4v exiftool -DateTimeOriginal="$t" -ContentCreateDate="$t" -CreateDate="$t" -ModifyDate="$t" -TrackCreateDate="$t" -TrackModifyDate="$t" -MediaCreateDate="$t" -MediaModifyDate="$t" -CreationDate="$t" "$f"

They stuck:
DateTimeOriginal : 2001:06:03 12:00:00 ContentCreateDate : 2001:06:03 12:00:00-04:00 CreateDate : 2001:06:03 12:00:00 ModifyDate : 2001:06:03 12:00:00 TrackCreateDate : 2001:06:03 12:00:00 TrackModifyDate : 2001:06:03 12:00:00 MediaCreateDate : 2001:06:03 12:00:00 MediaModifyDate : 2001:06:03 12:00:00 CreationDate : 2001:06:03 12:00:00

Is there a different metadata tag I should use so LR will pick it up properly?

 

[johnrellis]

Are you on an Apple Silicon (M1) computer? LR doesn't read metadata for videos on M1s:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...es-with-video-files-on-m1-macs/idi-p/12342438

If that's your issue, please add your constructive opinion to the bug report and be sure to click the Upvote button at the top-right and Follow at the bottom of the first post. That will make it a little more likely Adobe will prioritize the fix, and you'll be notified when the bug's status changes.

 

[johnrellis]

If you're getting struck by the M1 bug, you could try this:

1. With Exiftool, set File:FileModifyDate to the capture date of the video.

2. Import the video into LR. (Normally, when LR can't read the metadata capture date, it will use the OS date-modified for the file.).

3. Select the newly imported videos and do Metadata > Edit Capture Time and click Change All (you can do many videos at once). This will permanently record the file modification date in the LR catalog as LR's notion of capture date. Note that this will not, repeat not, repeat not, change all the videos to the same capture date. Rather, it will set each video's capture date to that shown under the video's thumbnail in Grid view.

If you don't do step 3, then LR will automatically change its notion of capture date to the file's current date-modified, so if the imported video file gets changed for whatever reason, LR will silently and immediately change the catalog capture date! LR has never handled files missing metadata capture dates well, and this is just one of several brain-dead problems.

This recipe normally works for files missing metadata capture dates, but since I don't have an M1 Mac, I'm not able to test it in the presence of this specific bug. So be sure to test it out with a couple videos first.

 

[dfkotz]

If you're getting struck by the M1 bug, you could try this:

1. With Exiftool, set File:FileModifyDate to the capture date of the video.

2. Import the video into LR. (Normally, when LR can't read the metadata capture date, it will use the OS date-modified for the file.).

3. Select the newly imported videos and do Metadata > Edit Capture Time and click Change All (you can do many videos at once). This will permanently record the file modification date in the LR catalog as LR's notion of capture date. Note that this will not, repeat not, repeat not, change all the videos to the same capture date. Rather, it will set each video's capture date to that shown under the video's thumbnail in Grid view.

If you don't do step 3, then LR will automatically change its notion of capture date to the file's current date-modified, so if the imported video file gets changed for whatever reason, LR will silently and immediately change the catalog capture date! LR has never handled files missing metadata capture dates well, and this is just one of several brain-dead problems.

This recipe normally works for files missing metadata capture dates, but since I don't have an M1 Mac, I'm not able to test it in the presence of this specific bug. So be sure to test it out with a couple videos first.

John,
Thanks for the detailed description of the bug and a workaround. I just did a test on my M1 laptop and confirmed this bug exists on MacOS 12.1 in Lightroom Classic version: 11.1 [ 202112022200-7fd1f998 ]. And I tried the workaround (for a single file) and confirmed that it works as you described above. I upvoted the bug report in the Adobe forum and hope they fix this soon! It will be a huge hassle if it persists.

 

[dfkotz]

Ok, I managed to set the time/date on each video, to import them, and convince LR to absorb the file date as the creation date. But the vast majority of the videos were imported with the wrong orientation (mostly, upside down). Any ideas about how to fix that?

 

[johnrellis]

But the vast majority of the videos were imported with the wrong orientation (mostly, upside down). Any ideas about how to fix that?

That's another symptom of the bug -- LR isn't reading the metadata tag describing the orientation of the video. I haven't seen any workarounds successfully tested. The only thing I can think of is to use a video editor that will actually rotate the pixels of the video in accordance with the metadata tag. E.g. open the video in the Mac Quicktime player and export it.

 

[dfkotz]

That's another symptom of the bug -- LR isn't reading the metadata tag describing the orientation of the video. I haven't seen any workarounds successfully tested. The only thing I can think of is to use a video editor that will actually rotate the pixels of the video in accordance with the metadata tag. E.g. open the video in the Mac Quicktime player and export it.

ugh. At this point I think I should give up on importing old videos into LR, until they fix this bug.

 

[dfkotz]

This problem appears to be resolved in newer LR updates; I'm at
Lightroom Classic version: 11.2 [ 202201281441-a5b5f472 ]

 

[johnrellis]

Right, Adobe fixed the problem with reading video metadata on M1 Macs in LR 11.2:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...es-with-video-files-on-m1-macs/idi-p/12342438