Not directly a LRTimelapse issue, but kept me busy for several hours until I found the problem. Want to share it with others which may encounter the same issue.

Problem

Adobe Lightroom doesn't read XMP files generated by LRTimelapse for some pictures (crop, white balance, exposure, etc. was not updated). Problem persisted even after erasing the whole folder and catalog and reimporting the pictures from camera. Always same pictures were affected. Not only Adobe Lightroom showed this, also Adobe Bridge.

Cause

I previously opened some pictures with Adobe Bridge and Photoshop with Camera Raw for editing stills. Somewhere this got saved and has overwritten the sidecar XMP files generated by LRTimelapse.

Solution

Open the affected NEF files with Photoshop camera raw and set every customization back to defaults and click "Done". Cleaning the Camera Raw cache in Photoshop preferences did not help.

Somewhere Adobe Camera Raw stores this information of altered NEF files and Lightroom uses this setting instead of the sidecar XMP file.

Environment

• Lightroom 4.4 (Adobe CS6)
  
• LRTimelapse 3
  
• MacOS X
  
• Nikon D3 NEF
  

Hi, thank you for reporting.
Bridge will overwrite XMP files without asking and without the need to "Write Metadata" explicitely. That sucks, because it sometime destroys the initialization LRTimelapse makes.
You can always go back to a clean state if you initialize in LRTimelapse (close bridge before) - if even that doesn't help you can clear the meatdata completely with the corresponding LRTimelapse command and then reinitialize. I always recommend not mixing up Lightroom and Bridge/ACR usage.
Best
Gunther

Hi Gunther,

Thanks for reply. I investigated a bit further. In this case Bridge did not store metadata in the sidecar XMP files. LRtimelapse only overwrites the XMP files when initializing.

The customizations were done with the Adobe Camera Raw Plugin when opening some files with Photoshop and the changes were stored in the central database. Lightroom uses this data when reading pictures from a directory. It ignores the XMP if there is an entry in the camera raw database, even when it's forced to read the metadata from files. The database is indexed by file contents and not file name or location. So renaming folder or files did not help.

On Mac the Camera Raw Database is located in the hidden library folder in the users home: ~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Camera Raw Database.

To get rid of such changes: select the whole sequence in Lightroom and then: Photo (or right-click) -> Develop Settings -> Reset

And then begin with the LRTimelapse workflow. Hope this helps others saving hours of wasted rendering time. I want those lost lifetime hours back from Adobe. :-)

Regards,
Bernd

Thank you for reporting this!

This post was last modified: 2015-01-31, 15:55 by Pretender.

Hi
I am having trouble with some files and I think the problem raised here is the cause - but I cannot find a way to fix it. I have edited some of the stills in the sequence in photoshop. I have then saved them manually overriding the extension to .NEF - hoping that they would be 'viewed' in the same way as the others are. All photos load just fine into LR5 (original and edited). I then open the sequence in LRT and again they all load just fine. However when I initialise the sequence, all fields to the left of Crop Bottom on the edited photos contain different values (either '0' or '?'). The error message when hovering over the field says value not initialised.

I have tried opening the particular file in camera raw - reseting to default, (none of the values seemed altered?) and then clicking Done. Interestingly after this when viewed in the File > Open box, the thumbnail next to the file still shows the Photoshop icon where as the others (unedited photos) show the picture. I have also tried the Develop Settings > Reset on a right click of the affected slide but again with no luck.

It is obvious that my edit of the shot in Photoshop has caused an alteration to the file somewhere which is corrupting the process in LRT. The question is how do i overcome the changes Photoshop is making to the file such that LRT can successfully read/process the file? I guess another way of dealing with this - how do I change the data in the photo after edit such that it is recognised again as a raw .NEF file and not a photoshop file? I am hoping the answer is not - Don't edit the photo in photoshop . . .

Thanks so much

Craig

PS. Very much appreciate the software - it makes the real amateurs such as myself seem that little bit more clever . . .

You cannot just save Files in Photoshop and rename them to NEF.
If you really want to edit somehting by pixel in Photoshop, please do this on the intermediary JPG files.

So, after performing the whole RAW process in LRTimelapse/Lightroom, like explained in the tutorials, export the sequence via the LRTExport plugin. Then, edit the jpg images in the LRT_* intermediary folder in Photoshop (probably useful for some stamping etc. - but mostly this is not necessary, because you can do all of this in LR as well).

NEF Files contain RAW data, that you cannot directly manipulate - only via XMP Metadata.

As an addition to the above, I have just noticed that after edit in photoshop, the dimensions of the shot have also changed. Instead of 6032x4032 (RAW (NEF)), the size is now 6016x4016. When originally working with this sequence and not realising that I had a problem, I noticed on import back into LR that these photos had not cropped into the 16x9 format. It was this 'failure' to read the .xmp file in LR that brought my attention to something not being right. Maybe this change in picture size is another contributing factor to corrupting the transition?

After having tried more options without success I am starting to wonder if it is possible to adjust a photo prior to importing into LRT. I am keen to keep the quality as high as possible - hence working with RAW files. However the need to correct an occasional photo for things such as a bird entering a single frame (then appearing as a stray black dot in the final sequence) seems inevitable. To then not be able to run a sequence in RAW . . .

Don't want to jump to conclusions just yet. Look forward to some assistance.

Thanks in advance.

Thanks - will try this.

You can fix birds in Lightroom too - just use the clone / heal brush - but please do this in Lightroom after the whole process with the transitions, right before exporting via LRTExport. This would preserve the maximum quality.

Like I told you, you cannot edit NEF files pixelwise - the won't be NEF after saving anymore - now matter what extension you give them.

Hi Gunther,

Thank you so much for making LRTimelapse available for everyone.
I just downloaded the free version and loaded it in my Mac OSx 10.9.5, went out to shoot some time lapse photography and loaded the files on the hard drive. I opened LRTimelapse and opened the folder with the raw files, they loaded OK. I made the adjustments in lightroom to the first photo and save the settings to the rest of the files. Saved the metadata but when I go back to LRTimelapse the new data does not show, it just shows the original photos. Could it be that I did not install the program correctly? Please help.

Thank you

Joe Colombo