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LR 9.0 upgrade discards all video metadata?

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earlecj

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Joined
Nov 29, 2019
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Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version: 9.0
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
I recently upgraded the catalog, as required by Adobe to even look at their contents, and it appears that all metadata (captions, titles, geolocation info, etc.) for my video files was discarded in the process. Is there any way to get it back?
 
Assuming your previous version was LR 7 or 8, you could use the Creative Cloud desktop app to install LR 8.4.1, and then open the old catalog in it. Use the LR/Transporter plugin to export the video files' metadata to a text file. Then start LR 9 with the upgraded catalog and use LR/Transporter to import that metadata from the text file.
 
I recently upgraded the catalog, as required by Adobe to even look at their contents, and it appears that all metadata (captions, titles, geolocation info, etc.) for my video files was discarded in the process.
That should not have happened, and I have upgraded plenty of catalogues with no loss of video files' metadata. Are you sure you opened the right catalogue?
 
J - LR/Transporter seems to have worked. Forgot that plugin even existed, haven't used it in years. When I rolled back to 8.4.1 and opened my backup catalog, everything was in there. Did the LR/Transporter export; currently reinstalling LR9 and will import the metadata.
 
Ask yourself why the problem happened. My guess is the update upgraded the wrong or rather an unexpected catalogue (I can think of a few ways people get this), so you may have lost other work that you haven't yet noticed.

So I'd suggest copying the correct catalogue, reinstalling LR9 and then using its File > Open Catalog command to open that catalogue.
 
This notion of having multiple similar catalogs is one I haven't seen before. I have all my own photos in one catalog, which makes it easier to find photos by keyword etc., and also means I can't confuse catalogs. This latest episode is the first time I've had to open a backup catalog and I've been using LR since V.1.0. But it's not the first time I've been troubled by LR's poor support for video formats, such as their recent decision to discontinue support for AVI files (which my Olympus cameras use for lower-resolution video formats), and now I'm finding it can't import my recent MP4 files, either (might have something to do with the fact that they were created using iMovie, though iMovie files were easily imported by LR V8.4). LR/AnyFile and LR/Transporter can address these issues but not conveniently.
 
As I say, I have never seen any reports of an LR upgrade losing metadata applied to video or other files. So something else has happened, which can include user errors such as accidentally clearing that metadata. Using one catalogue does indeed reduce confusion, and if LR's preferences are set to open the most-recent catalogue or a specific one, the 9.0 update should open and upgrade that catalogue. If not, it might have upgraded a different copy.
 
At this point, the LR/Transporter plugin served to transfer the missing data from the old catalog to the new one, for some files I recreated the metadata, and I haven't found an issue with any of the older-than-mid-2019 files. It sounds as if this was an isolated instance, maybe caused by a glitch in the install or a conflict on my system, so I won't worry about it unless it recurs.
 
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