Today’s Question: I have a pretty fast computer, but when I try to play videos in Lightroom Classic they don’t play smoothly. Is there a way to improve video playback in Lightroom Classic?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Lightroom Classic does not perform great in general when it comes to playing video. I recommend opening video clips you want to review in the operating system from within Lightroom Classic for playback.
More Detail: Even with a very fast computer, video playback in Lightroom Classic will often be less than smooth. Fortunately, it is very easy to open videos from Lightroom Classic through your operating system, so you can use an application that is better suited for video playback to review your videos.
The first step to opening a video from Lightroom Classic is to reveal the source video file. To do so, right click on the thumbnail for a video in Lightroom Classic and from the popup menu choose “Show in Finder” on Macintosh or “Show in Explorer” on Windows. This will open a window for the folder that contains the video, with the video itself highlighted.
You can then either double-click on the video to open it with the default application, or right-click on the video to select an option to open with a different application. Using this approach will ensure you’re able to view the video with great performance using an application that is better suited to playing videos compared to Lightroom Classic.
