ON1 Sidecar File Mess
I have tried to get PR to fully work from the beginning but I always seem to end up with another problem.
I tried cataloging a couple of years ago with no success. Eventually, I was told by support my slide folder was too large so I gave up.
Working with 200mb slide scans was nothing but problems especially as a plug from PS or LR.
So, with PR 2020 I decided to abandon the slides and use PR standalone for digital camera files at 25 to 35 MB each in hopes that I can use PR. So far some success.
So the problem now is I found a mess with ON1 sidecar files when I went to use CCC backup program. For some reason I have sidecar files attached to most of my photos, even the ones I never edited with ON1. There are probably thousand of photos like this. As I said before, I used PR (all the way to Perfect Suite) as a Plug in with LR and PS and never really as a stand alone until now. The few photos I have done with PR standalone recently, I understand the sidecar files but not the other files, photos, especially the slides which were never used with PR stand alone. They were Tiff files. To make matters worse, I believe my Virus Scan got a hold of them and modified their dates which meant the old ON1 sidecar file were sent to their SafetyNet, so now I have to see if my edits are lost. I did check the Virus Scan log dates and in most cases they do not match the modified sidecar files so maybe it did not but either way I now have sidecar files excluded from my virus scan.
So, why all of the sidecar files? All of the years with PR and CCC I never had this problem until now. Now what do I do?
Did my attempted cataloging add all of these sidecar files? And do you always get a sidecar file when you edit as a plug in?
My thoughts are to remove of these sidecar files and put them in a folder and move them off my computer and if I find an edit is missing, try to retrieve the sidecar file and put it back and hope the edits are there. If I do this will the sidecar files stay away unless I edit a file, photo? Any better ideas, thoughts?
I really want to stay away from Adobe's subscription program so I am hoping ON1 can be a replacement for my digital files at least and hopefully for my slides in the future.
Sorry about the long post. I have to clean up this mess with sidecar files everywhere and get my system for back up working correctly.
Thank you for any input, answers.
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Check to see if you have "Apply Lens correction automatically" selected in preferences. If you do try turning it off. It memory serves having this turned on will generate a sidecar file for every photo even if you just look at them in browse.
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I should add you can just turn off the sidecar file option in preferences but personally I think it's best to leave them on for various reasons.
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I agree with David, it's best to leave sidecars turned on. No idea why they would all have sidecars, but there is nothing wrong with that.
Sidecars are the only backup of your edits. Also, separating the sidecars from your photos is a bad idea. If you move a sidecar On1 may create a new one anyway, and you're likely to get edits out of sync with the database.
So, yea, you have a lot of sidecars, but you don't say why that's a problem. Just back them up with their photos. That's what they're for. If you're just editing in On1, you won't see them anyway.
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Something has changed in 2020.5.1. I have an Exports folder I move all my jpegs to so I can easily access them to be uploaded to the web. All the jpegs I've moved into that folder wind up with .on1 & .xmp sidecars if I leave them there long enough. That never used to happen unless I actually opened one in the editor or made metadata changes to it.
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Lens correction is off and as far as I can remember it has never been checked.
One problem with all of the sidecar files is the "date modified" was changed and I am not sure if it was the virus scan but it now excludes sidecar files. Also, I am having to check to see if edits are missing. As to the ones that were never edited, what will happen when I do edit with an old sidecar file?
Currently, I cannot edit the slides with PR without problems so I am stuck with PS and LR. So, if I ever can do edit the slides in PR later then I do not know what the old sidecar file will do. That is one reason to clear them out so as not to create a problem in the future.
When you use PR as a plug in does it create a sidecar file?
I do intend to leave the sidecar option checked for my edits I do in PR.
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No, when used as a plugin, you don't get a sidecar file.
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Brian, I have had a few .xmp files which I figured were either PS or LR. Anyway, it was just a few so I am not concerned about them
Also, I went to browse in PR and looked into one of the slide folders to see if there were edits applied and there were none. Also, it did not load quickly either. So, I removed one sidecar file and there was no difference. I then opened one file in Text edit and it looks like Metadata, which again has nothing to do with ON1 since I never accessed these slides through the stand alone program.
So these sidecar files look like they have no value. The only thing I can think of is I have all of my photos in the Picture folder on my iMac and for some reason ON1 got into all of them. I do have my Picture folder set as default in Browse.
Also, does the catalog create sidecar files?
Anyway, probably not worth pursuing. Hopefully, it does not happen again, at least until I edit a photo.
Also, to note is to make sure your virus scan does not scan your sidecar files. This can compound this problem
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The only case I can think of where the cataloging process might create an .xmp is if it finds a pixel format image file which has embedded metadata and no existing .xmp file. The program would read the metadata from the image and add that to its database which should trigger the creation of the .xmp file.
I know this is something that was worked on for the 2020.5.1 release. Prior to that metadata changes for .dng files were not being automatically saved in .xmp files for other programs to see. You had to use the Embed Metadata command for them to be seen. That was fixed. I also know a lot of work was done on metadata handling to fix the problems that existed for using keywords and that involved updating the sidecar files.
It is entirely possible that this is why all the sidecar files were touched and their modified dates updated with the new version of the program. That should not have removed the edit info though. I don't know why that was lost.
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Brian, I should have explained better. The files, slides, I was referring to had never been edited in ON1. Some were edited as a plug in from LR but the example I took had never been edited especially by ON1 and yet there is a sidecar file with what looks like Metadata when opened in the TextEdit app.
The only 2 ways I know ON1 has had anything to do with these slides was when I tried to catalog which was not successful and the other way is they are in my Pictures folder, but I have not accessed these folders from PR browse other than the Picture folder which is my default setting in Browse. They should not be creating sidecar files unless I edit them.
Anyway, I am going to try to clean up the slides and wait and see if it happens again.
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You haven't said what kind of sidecar files you see with your scanned slides. Are they .on1 files or .xmp files? Lightroom would have created .xmp files that ON1 might have updated. Because the program stores metadata in its own .on1 files as well, if there was existing .xmp files new .on1 files might have been created with the same metadata and no edits.
The problems people had with keywords that had been deleted but kept reappearing, or keywords that were in the list but never returned any images when you searched for them were because of there being multiple places where metadata was stored — the .on1 & .xmp sidecar files, the program's internal database, and possibly inside image files themselves. Those repositories would get out of sync and the program would find them in one location only but not search that location when the keywords were searched for. The fixes meant keeping the .on1 & .xmp files in better sync which it seems to be doing. If you watch the files metadata in another program such as Bridge you can see the changes made in ON1 appear almost immediately in Bridge. That was not always happening before. You had to do an Embed Metadata to manually sync them. Most users don't use that command and things would get out of sync.
I'm sure cataloging has something to do with it but I expect that simply browsing a location that has not been cataloged could cause the creation of the .on1 files as well when those images are scanned for their metadata.
None of this explains edited images loosing their edits unless somehow the fixes above have messed with the editing data causing it to get dropped. I don't know. This is all speculation on my part.
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Brian, They are .on1 files. I have sent a small example of slides never edited and yet there are .on1 files. Check out the dates.
I did an experiment and removed the .on1 files from one folder, browsed in ON1 and even went to edit but did not edit, and nothing was generated.
I still think I am going to have to remove these .on1 files for now, since I will have to edit in LR and PS6 to begin with, and if PR can ever (hopefully) edit the slides without a problem then I can use PR for editing them. I do not want the old .on1 files to cause a problem later on. I have not given up on PR as I said I am using my digital camera files for editing since it seems most everyone seem to be having success with these smaller files.
FYI: I am using a 2017 iMac 27', I7 4.0, 4gb video card, 24mb of ram, so my computer setup should not be a problem.
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The .on1 files will not cause any problems for other programs as they won't even recognize them and will simply ignore them.
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I as only thinking that if I try to edit in PR later on after editing in LR or PS6, it it may affect how the photo is displayed in PR as it may have old .on1 settings. Just trying to keep from having problems in the future and removing the .on1 apparently has no effect since they were not edited. It is strange that this happened and cannot be sure what .on1 did or will do in the future.
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Gotcha. :)
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Well I guess ON1 likes to keep us guessing with surprises every now and then. I will wait and see what else ON1 surprises us with. Thanks for all of the input.
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Do you grade your photos? if you grade your photos it will create a .on1 and an .xmp file.
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Yes, when changes to metadata such as giving them a rating are made the program will store those edits in both .xmp & .on1 sidecar files.
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What do you mean by "bring everything back into sync?"
The only way for sidecars to have different names from the image files they were created for or to have them without any corresponding images is to have made changes to file names, locations, or to have deleted image files all from the Finder. The ON1 program will always handle the image files and their sidecars as a set to keep everything synced as long as you make those kinds of changes inside the program.
There isn't any way to clean this up from within the ON1 program. You'll have to do it all manually in the Finder. You'll either need to move the orphaned .on1 & .xmp sidecar files to the new locations for their corresponding image files (be sure that if they already have sidecars at that location you know which one you want to keep associated with the image file), rename them to match the new image file names or just delete them.
If all the corresponding images look correct in ON1 — all their edits & metadata are intact — I would just delete the orphaned sidecars that go with those images.
Good luck.
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Yes, edits and metadata are stored in internal databases as well as in the sidecar files. The reason for the loss of edits and metadata is a cause for concern and has been discussed in other threads here. The company said they had found some bugs that were related but who knows if those were all of them. Currently, I'm being overly cautious with my backup strategy for this reason. So far I haven't had any need to use any backups for recovery.
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