Forgive a newbie if this is common knowledge, but I always convert my Sony AWR RAW files to DNG in Lightroom CC during import so I don't have to worry about XMP sidecar files. Can LRT6 open already converted DNG files from my LR CC folder to process a timelapse? I would like to do a mixture of timelapse and stills work, so will my standard practice of converting to DNG upon import into LR CC cause problems when using LRT6? Thanks.

This post was last modified: 2024-01-07, 20:29 by Gunther.

First of all, of course, LRTimelapse supports DNG files without any problems.

However, in terms of performance DNG files are not really good, exactly because the don't use XMP sidecar files. This means that the whole DNG needs to be rewritten on each Metadata operation, which is way slower than just rewrite the XMP file. So if you want the maximum performance, I'd work with the original Raw files. XMP files are nothing you need to "worry about". LR and LRT will take care of them and you can just ignore them.
Also for incremental backup systems working with XMP sidecars is much better. Because that way only the tiny XMP will change and trigger a new backup. With DNG files, the whole sequence will need to get backuped again after each operation which is not only slower but also costs much more space in an incremental backup.

Also you write "Lightroom CC" - LRTimelapse works with "Lightroom Classic", not the "Cloud version" of Lightroom (often confusingly called "Desktop", or "CC". )

I understand the logic and will start to use RAW + XMP instead of converting to DNG. Yes, I use LR Classic, not CC on my desktop/laptop. Thanks, Gunther.