Speed of work of exiftool

[lorents]

good afternoon!
Prompt, how it is possible to increase speed of work of exiftool?
Now it works extremely slowly if to compare it to jhead.
exiftool I use only for removal of metadata

[Phil Harvey]

Yes, ExifTool is slower than jhead.

Most of the overhead of ExifTool is from loading/compiling the program at startup.  To avoid this overhead it is best to process many files at the same time.  Alternatively, the -stay_open feature may be used.

See "Improving Performance" in the ExifTool home page for more information.

- Phil

[lorents]

Whether could give you to me advice

Code Select Expand

for /f "delims=" %%i in ('dir /b /s /a-d Dir1\*.jpg') do (
exiftool -exif:all= -iptc:all= -xmp:all= -icc_profile:all= -photoshop:all= -comment= -overwrite_original "%%~fi"
)

How to me in given cases to increase speed of work of exiftool?
And how it is possible to organize a multithreading?

[Phil Harvey]

Don't call exiftool for each file.  Instead, pass all file names to exiftool in a single command.  Or better yet, use -ext jpg and pass the directory name to exiftool.

This will improve your speed substantially.

- Phil

[lorents]

I have a problem that the image of JPEG passes some stages, and here therefore I can't transfer all of JPEG at once. I do not know what to do.

[Phil Harvey]

The -execute option is designed for this.  With this option you can execute multiple processing stages in a single command.

Also, look at the -@ option to store the arguments in a separate file.

- Phil

[lorents]

Thanks!

[LKB]

Phil,
I am currently trying to write a description to a large number of files. Each file will have different description, as I'm trying to maintain it as a sort of rough "diary". I got slow netbook so its easier for me to put descriptions separately and then process all the files in their own time. From what I can see -@ would be the best way here to convert this command line into -@ driven text file?

currently for each file I will have to write :
exiftool.exe  ex1.xmp  -Description="This is a view of great valley"

I understand that using -@ approach will make it not only easier but faster as well.
Is this any correct?
exiftool -stay_open True -@ myArg.fle
where myArg.fle:
ex1.xmp
-Description="This is a view of great valley"

From what I understand ARGFILE description is part of ExifTool man, which can be displayed if exiftool.exe is typed. Is there any more docs dealing with it?

Cheers,

Lukasz

[Phil Harvey]

If you just want to process a number of files in a batch, the argfile could look like this:

Code Select Expand

-description=This is a description
path/to/some.jpg
-execute
-description=another description
different/path/another.jpg
-execute
...
-description=last description
last.jpg

You don't need the -stay_open option here.  -stay_open is used only when interactively processing files to keep exiftool from terminating between invocations.

Also note that you don't quote arguments in the argfile.

- Phil