Invalid date/time and No writable tags

[Marina]

Hello everyone, I'm using ExifTool to find the earliest date of an image file and set all dates to that value. I use this config file:

Code Select Expand

%Image::ExifTool::UserDefined = (
    'Image::ExifTool::Composite' => {
        # Select oldest date from a number of date tags
        OldestDateTime => {
            Desire => {
                0 => 'FileModifyDate',
                1 => 'MDItemFSContentChangeDate',
                2 => 'FileCreateDate',
                3 => 'MDItemFSCreationDate',
                4 => 'ModifyDate',
                5 => 'CreateDate',
                6 => 'DateTimeCreated',
                7 => 'DateTimeOriginal',
                8 => 'SubSecTimeOriginal',
                9 => 'SubSecTimeDigitized',
                10 => 'SubSecCreateDate',
                11 => 'SubSecDateTimeOriginal',
            },
            ValueConv => q{
                my $oldest = undef;
                for my $date (@val) {
                    next if not defined $date or $date lt '1970:01:02';
                    $date =~ s/[+-]\d{2}:\d{2}$//; # Strip TimeZone
                    if ($date && (!$oldest || $date lt $oldest)) {
                        $oldest = $date;
                    }
                }
                return $oldest;
            },
        },
    },
);

1;

This is the command I use:
exiftool -config C:\Windows\oldest_datetime.config "C:\Users\Utente\Documents\Foto e video" -r "-FileModifyDate<OldestDateTime" "-FileCreateDate<OldestDateTime" "-ModifyDate<OldestDateTime" "-CreateDate<OldestDateTime" "-DateTimeOriginal<OldestDateTime" "-DateAcquired<OldestDateTime" "-SubSecCreateDate<OldestDateTime" "-SubSecDateTimeOriginal<OldestDateTime"

This is the warning I get for quite a lot of files:
Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in File:FileModifyDate (PrintConvInv) - C:/Users/Utente/Documents/Foto e video/20231010_103701.jpg
Warning: No writable tags set from C:/Users/Utente/Documents/Foto e video/20231010_103701.jpg

When I check the files' properties the format looks good to me though:
exiftool -a -s -G1 -time:all "C:/Users/Utente/Documents/Foto e video/20231010_103701.jpg"
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2023:08:09 13:00:43+02:00
[System]        FileAccessDate                  : 2024:02:01 23:52:19+01:00
[System]        FileCreateDate                  : 2024:01:30 09:39:33+01:00
[IFD0]          ModifyDate                      : 2023:08:09 13:00:42
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2023:08:09 13:00:42
[ExifIFD]       CreateDate                      : 2023:08:09 13:00:42
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTime                      : +02:00
[ExifIFD]       OffsetTimeOriginal              : +02:00
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTime                      : 177
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTimeOriginal              : 177
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTimeDigitized             : 177
[ICC-header]    ProfileDateTime                 : 2022:07:01 00:00:00
[Samsung]       TimeStamp                       : 2023:08:09 13:00:42.177+02:00
[Composite]     SubSecCreateDate                : 2023:08:09 13:00:42.177
[Composite]     SubSecDateTimeOriginal          : 2023:08:09 13:00:42.177+02:00
[Composite]     SubSecModifyDate                : 2023:08:09 13:00:42.177+02:00

I don't understand what's wrong with FileModifyDate format.. can somebody help?

[Phil Harvey]

The problem is with the value you are copying to FileModifyDate.  What is the value of OldestDateTime for this file?

- Phil

[Marina]

Oh I get it! In fact now I ran
exiftool -config C:\Windows\oldest_datetime.config -u -g1 "C:/Users/Utente/Documents/Foto e video/20231010_103701.jpg"

And the last value extracted was:
Oldest Date Time                : 177

In my config file (which I edited in my original post because some lines were missing) I included SubSecTimeOriginal and SubSecTimeDigitized to check for the oldest date but I guess they're the culprits for my warning.

I was wondering though, is there a way to edit my config file to ignore a value if it's not in a specific format?

[Phil Harvey]

Try this:

Code Select Expand

                for my $date (@val) {
                    next if not defined $date or $date lt '1970:01:02';
                    next if $date !~ /^\d{4}:\d{2}:\d{2} \d{2}:\d{2}:\d{2}/;
                    $date =~ s/[+-]\d{2}:\d{2}$//; # Strip TimeZone
                    if ($date && (!$oldest || $date lt $oldest)) {
                        $oldest = $date;
                    }
                }
- Phil

[StarGeek]

I would say it would be easier to simply remove those lines, as those tags by themselves would never be a complete date.  You also should removed the MDItemFSContentChangeDate and MDItemFSCreationDate tags as they are Mac only tags and don't exist on Windows.