Rating gets wiped after every few months

[MarioRossi99]

Hi there

I use the program mainly to rate raw photos. It all worked well for years until in 2024 the rating started to go missing every few months. It happened again today on version 1.8.3 MacOs.

I simply click on 5 excellent for example then 2 go back on 5 and all is gone, and then all of the ratings gets wiped for the the 1-5 ratings.

Do you guys experience this as well? I cant go through thousands of photos every few months. I am considering switching to a different software. I am paying for a Adobe Photography maybe I should consider starting to use Lightroom, I normally use Photoshop and Adobe Camera Raw for my editing.

[xnview]

very strange, but we need more information. is it with 1.8.6?
what do you have in settings>Metadata? do you use catalog?

[MarioRossi99]

No it happened with previous versions as well.

Not sure I use the catalog. I usually click on Catalog Filter tab and and click on one of the ratings 5 is the photos I have completed the edit and the other ratings are for photos I have to edit. 1 is the rating for photos I have to delete.

In Preferences>Metadata

There is a check on:
- Automatically import XMP:Subject and IPTC:Keywords to Catalog's Categories
- Read hierarchical keywords from images as categories
SI010|0:0.

Screenshot 2025-02-19 at 16.05.26.png

[xnview]

So you use catalog only, rating is not exported in embedded metadata. Do you use jpeg files?
could you describe the steps to reproduce the problem?

[MarioRossi99]

The files that I rate are only sony raw files.

I cannot reproduce the issues it happened 3 times in the last 6 months. I used the program for several years without any issue.

Ranmly I click on on rating 5 for example, switch to rating 2 I got back to rating 5 and there is nothing there, I go back to 2 and 2ratings are still there but if I click away and go back even 2 gets wiped and so on for all the ratings when one of the ratings disappear then all others do as well.

Unfortunately it makes me lose lot of time to recreate my ratings and my workflow rely on those ratings. It is sad that this random issue will force me to find a different solution for my workflow, probably Bridge althought XnView is better for what I do, defo faster.

So you use catalog only, rating is not exported in embedded metadata.

If I check Export retting in XMP metadata. Do you think it will prevent this random behaviour to happen again?

[xnview]

Ranmly I click on on rating 5 for example, switch to rating 2 I got back to rating 5 and there is nothing there, I go back to 2 and 2ratings are still there but if I click away and go back even 2 gets wiped and so on for all the ratings when one of the ratings disappear then all others do as well.

you click on rating 5/2 in Category filter panel?

[MarioRossi99]

Yeah I simply click on one of the ratings go to a different rating and when I go back to the previous one it's blank.

But as I said there is no way to reproduce the problem. Everything works fine for a couple of months and then all of sudden while using the app the ratings gets wiped. It always happens while I'm using the app.

[MarioRossi99]

This problem affected also 1.8.7. I'll try 1.9.2.

[MarioRossi99]

I'm still having the same issue and I tried several upgrades now I'm on 1.10.5 still same behaviour. I tried to set a colour label in the catalog filter as I thought it could be an insurance if the rating would get wiped I would use the colour label but it turns out they both get wiped at the same time. It's so much time consuming to re rate hundreds of photos that I still have to edit and hundreds that were edited waiting for publication.

Sadly I'm forced back to Bridge that is slower than a snail

[jkm]

I'm sorry to hear you're having troubles, Mario.

If you're just announcing your departure, then ok, bye.

If you'd still like help, please post current screenshots of the following settings screens:

Settings:Catalog
Settings:Catalog:Excluded/Included
Settings:Metadata
Settings:Metadata:Sidecar

I have some ideas as to what may be going on with your situation. The app is not known to just randomly forget information.

Are you using NAS, external drives, or any removable storage for your images?

[MarioRossi99]

Sorry it wasn’t a bitter announcement slamming the door out. I meant to say that I'm truly sorry I have to use Bridge instead of XnView that I used for a long time without problems, but it's over a year and a half that this issue prevents me from using it as I lose so much time to rebuild the ratings every time it happens.

Also it affects only RAW files - I use a Sony camera.

I use a Mac, the photos are on the system SSD.

[jkm]

Sorry it wasn’t a bitter announcement slamming the door out. I meant to say that I'm truly sorry I have to use Bridge instead of XnView that I used for a long time without problems, but it's over a year and a half that this issue prevents me from using it as I lose so much time to rebuild the ratings every time it happens.

Don't worry about it. Computer problems can be frustrating.

Also it affects only RAW files - I use a Sony camera.

Please be careful about what you assert, because I have to derive from it. Earlier you said you only rate sony raw files. So are you now saying that when you rate jpegs and raw files, the ratings are ONLY lost on the raw files and there's no problem with jpeg? Or is it still you only rate raw files, so you can only see a problem with ratings being lost on raw files, and what may or may not happen with jpegs you wouldn't know?

Ratings being lost on all your files is very different from ratings being lost on raws but never lost on jpegs.

I use a Mac, the photos are on the system SSD.

So it's the internal drive you boot from that has all the photos? No external disks or anything?

Do you ever move or rename or relocate any of the folders/directories that hold your image files, or the image files themselves?

I see something concerning in the screenshot for Settings:Catalog. The size column should not be 0 unless you recently cleaned or emptied your database, or you have no files or have not browsed to those directories.

I'd like you to please redo the Settings:Catalog screenshot, but drag the column divider for the directory column so it's wider so I can see the entire path. You can resize the dialog box too if necessary.

Please also show a screenshot of Settings:Integration:Paths


I don't have an answer yet, but I will give you a couple of pieces of general advice...

The way you have the app currently configured, it is saving your ratings/etc in the database ONLY. Nothing is written to the files or out to the filesystem in general.

A consequence of this is that you can lose your data in the database (ratings) IF any of the following occur:
1. There is some strange bug in the app that causes a loss of data in the database
2. Your computer misbehaves and causes some problem
3. You personally do something inappropriate.

So for starters I'm going to recommend that you change the following settings:
Settings:Metadata:Sidecar:Create or update XMP Sidecar=ENABLED
Settings:Metadata:Sidecar:Update master file=OFF
Settings:Metadata:Sidecar:Naming convention=filename.extension.xmp
Settings:File list:Companion files:Link companion files for the following actions=Delete & Copy both ENABLED
Settings:File list:Companion files:Show companion files=OFF

I would also encourage you to set Settings:Metadata:Exiftool to Enabled. You're missing out on a lot of functionality without that.

(If you use some other application that uses sidecars (I assume you don't) then you might need to change the Naming Convention setting to match the naming convention used by the other application)

Doing this will ensure that when you rate a raw file, the rating will be also written to an XMP sidecar file on the filesystem. This way, if for whatever reason you lose ratings in the db again, you can recover them seamlessly because they will still be stored in the sidecar files. With the settings I gave you, your master files (the raws) will not be modified unless you explicitly take action to do so.

Once you make these changes, restart the app (just to be safe), and check the settings to verify the new settings are still correctly in place.
If they are, then go ahead and rate one of your raw files. Immediately after you do that, go look at the folder the raw file is in, and you should see an XMP file with the same name as well.

Now about that Settings:Catalog screenshot... Since I see the scrollbar, it looks like you have a LONG list of directories. Do all of of them say 0 for size? You can actually sort by that column by clicking on the header. If some of them actually have something non-zero for the size, I'd like to see that as well, so that I can see the full path associated with it. We might have to check something later, and I want to be able to refer to a specific directory that I know has metadata in it.

The 2nd directory in the list, that ends in 2009, has 277 files in it, but 0 size. That should only be true if you have never browsed to that folder in XnViewMP. Browse to that folder, and thumbnails and metadata should be scanned, and then you should see the size column for that 2009 folder be definitely non-zero. (and it should stay that way).

FYI: 1.11.2 is the current version.

[MarioRossi99]

Thank you for the support. To answer your questions:

1. In the past I only rated RAW files but in the last few months I also rated a few JPG and DNG raw files that I took with my iphone. The DNG are also gone so yeah I think it's correct to say it affects only Sony RAW and Iphone RAW, the JPG rated are still there.

2. Yes the internal SSD I boot from has all the photos, there is always an external SSD connected to the system but I use that one for videos only. All the RAW photos I rate are on the system internal SSD.

3. Folder structure is created before I copy the raw files in the assigned folder and I never make any changes after that. So all the files are the right folder before the rating starts.

4. The size column is zero for all the paths excluded a few ones. I did not clean or emptied the database.
Some of the paths points to external HD I havent used in like 4/5 years and I was not rating the files back then. Also it's full of folders that do not exist anymore. Should I delete all of and rebuild?

These folders are the all full with photos and most of them had the RAW photos with the ratings I recently lost:

Screenshot 2026-05-15 at 11.27.24.png

These are the only ones with size different than zero:

Screenshot 2026-05-15 at 11.39.45.png

Screenshot 2026-05-15 at 11.29.18.png

Maybe i should have not touched anything but I thought of cleaning up things a bit running this and the paths with size different than zero are all gone now, all of the entries are zero in size, some of the folders in the list i havent browsed in a long time but some are the ones I have been using lately:

Screenshot 2026-05-15 at 11.51.43.png

Now for examle this folder is also at zero but has lots of files:

Screenshot 2026-05-15 at 11.58.09.png

Here is my clearly browsing to that folder:

Screenshot 2026-05-15 at 11.58.34 Large.jpeg

Went back to Catalog but still at zero:

Screenshot 2026-05-15 at 11.59.28 Large.jpeg

I am updating to the latest version as well

[jkm]

Thanks for the screenshots.

1. In the past I only rated RAW files but in the last few months I also rated a few JPG and DNG raw files that I took with my iphone. The DNG are also gone so yeah I think it's correct to say it affects only Sony RAW and Iphone RAW, the JPG rated are still there.

When you say "JPG rated are still there", exactly what do you mean? You're using the Catalog Filter panel to show files with a certain rating, or you're browsing to the folder they're in?

4. The size column is zero for all the paths excluded a few ones. I did not clean or emptied the database.
Some of the paths points to external HD I havent used in like 4/5 years and I was not rating the files back then. Also it's full of folders that do not exist anymore. Should I delete all of and rebuild?

If you delete the db and rebuild now, you'll lose the ratings on the jpeg files, so hold off for the moment.

... and the paths with size different than zero are all gone now, all of the entries are zero in size,...

Hmm, this result indicates paths have changed, but you say they haven't.

By "all gone" do you mean the entries for those paths (that had non-zero sizes) were totally removed, or just that they are now of zero size?

I'd like you to do a couple of checks:

First, please confirm that these two folders are no longer listed at all in the Catalog database directory list:
/Users/dav/Pictures/A2P PHOTOS/0. Monte Misma/
/Users/dav/Pictures

I expect that they are completely missing, due to your "all gone now" statement above.

Next, in the Mac file manager (not XnViewMP) examine two folders please:

/Users/dav/Pictures/A2P PHOTOS/0. Monte Misma/
Does that folder still exist, and are there still 19 images at that exact path?

/Users/dav/Pictures
I know the folder exists, because it still has children in your subsequent screenshot.
But are there still 19 images in that folder?

When you ran Catalog maintenance, a directory should be completely removed from the list only if it no longer exists or has 0 images. It will remain on the list but have its size changed to zero if you had the "Purge all thumbnails" option checked, which your screenshot indicates you did not.

Are you always using Details View in the Browser?

When you browse to a (new) folder in Details view, thumbnails are not automatically generated.
That could account for the 0 size entries in the Catalog screen.

This possibility is possible because of two defects:

1. The Size column in Settings:Catalog is only showing the size of cached thumbnails, not the total size of thumbs+metadata. This is a defect in my view; very misleading. So zero size there means only that there are no cached thumbs, not that there is no cached metadata.

2. I did not consider you might be primarily/exclusively using Details view. A defect in my thinking.

If you browse to a folder in thumbnails view, then thumbnails will be generated and you will see those size columns become non-zero.


If you do a Help->About, it will tell you the exact path to your INI file, where your XnViewMP database is also stored. Do you have backups of that folder? Your Mac might be making backups so that you have old versions of the database. That could help recover metadata that you think you've lost.

Lastly, please do make the settings changes I provided before, and report back that/if you see the behavior I described. This will be important later.

[user0]

If you delete the db and rebuild now, you'll lose the ratings on the jpeg files

this is not how it works, his JPEGs should have embedded metadata

why

• settings
  ☑ Export Rating,Label,Keywords
  ☐ Create/update XMP sidecar

• app behaviour
  when Rating,Label,Keywords changed via overlay icons in Browser or Metadata>Set.. menus
  app will not write metadata into RAW files, only into regular images
  
  Note: 'Update files from catalog' command ignores 'Create/update XMP sidecar' checkbox and always creates sidecars for RAW files.

what to do

• change app settings
  to prevent loosing metadata for RAW files in the future:
  1. check 'Create/update XMP sidecar' in Settings>Metadata>Sidecar
  2. uncheck JPEG,PNG if sidecar files are not required

• database
  you likely moved files outside of the app, so app lost track of them
  • fix
    you can try to fix orphaned records via relocating folder or editing paths in db
    
    OR
  • start from the scratch
    just rename/delete db to start with the new one