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Metadata Extraction

MakerVault reads inside LightBurn .lbrn and .lbrn2 files at scan time to extract metadata that’s normally invisible without opening LightBurn.

DataSource in fileWhere it appears
Show Notes<Notes> elementDetail panel, search index
Cut Settings<CutSetting> elementsDetail panel, preview
Text Elements<Shape Type="Text"> attributesDetail panel, deep search
Font NamesFont attribute on text shapesDetail panel, font auto-linking
App Version<LightBurnProject AppVersion>Detail panel
Embedded Thumbnail<Thumbnail Source>Preview

LightBurn uses two file formats:

  • .lbrn — Plain XML
  • .lbrn2 — Can be either plain XML or ZIP-compressed XML

MakerVault handles both transparently. It tries ZIP decompression first, then falls back to reading the file as plain XML.

Metadata is extracted during the initial folder scan. If you add LightBurn files to a watched folder later, the file watcher picks them up and extracts metadata automatically.

MakerVault also has a stale metadata refresh that re-extracts data for files that were scanned before certain extraction features were added (like font extraction).

Extracted metadata is stored in two forms:

  • Structured JSON — For display in the detail panel and preview
  • Flattened text — For full-text search via the FTS5 index