Print Page - m2ts DateTimeOriginal editing

Title: m2ts DateTimeOriginal editing
Post by: ganymede55 on December 30, 2015, 06:10:54 PM

On a recent vacation, one of my Sony cameras was off by 11 hours and 38 min (+11:38:00 adjustment), resulting in pictures and videos grouped by the wrong date. I can get the pictures cleaned up using ExifTool (and other front ends like GeoSetter) and I can use ExifTool or one of the others to adjust the FileCreateDate and FileModifyDate. Unfortunately, some of my programs use only the DateTimeOriginal to group files in Windows folders or display them by date. So it seems that my only choice is to update the DateTimeOriginal. I read that ExifTool does not support this (and it reminds me when I try). Are there any plans to support this soon or are there any tools that do allow this to be adjusted? All I've found is tools that adjust the sidecar or similar files, but never the original. Or is there some sort of workaround that I'm not thinking of?

I've spent way too much time on this and really have no other leads at this point, so this is it before throwing in the towel. I think updating only the pictures would be worse than leaving everything alone.

Title: Re: m2ts DateTimeOriginal editing
Post by: Hayo Baan on December 31, 2015, 01:35:07 AM

DateTimeOriginal is supported, but not in all file formats (especially video). The problem to get this implemented is that video formats are quite a mess (eve more so than raw image files) so Phil has had no reliable way of updating the tag without potentially breaking the file.

A safe way of updating the tag would be to change its value in-place. Without touching any other bits in the file. This is not the way exiftool works though so it can not get implemented this way there :(

Title: Re: m2ts DateTimeOriginal editing
Post by: ganymede55 on December 31, 2015, 02:41:23 PM

Hayo,
Thanks for the reply, but I'm not totally clear on what you're saying. I know that DateTimeOriginal is supported as a read and that it exists in my file because I can see it in exiftool output. I'm pretty sure that it's not supported (likely for the reasons you mentioned below). I can also set FileCreateDate and FileModifyDate to match it. I'm not clear if that was in question in your response above.

My main question is what do you mean by "change its value in-place"? Do you mean with exiftool or some other application? If so, what? I can't even see the value in the basic windows properties for example. Any clarifications are much appreciated.

Title: Re: m2ts DateTimeOriginal editing
Post by: Hayo Baan on January 01, 2016, 05:44:48 AM

With in-place, I meant editing the data at the exact spot they are in the file. Exiftool always fully rewrites the file (which cleans it up and optimises the structure optimised as well), but with video files this is too error prone so exiftool can't do it. Perhaps you can change the DateTimeOriginal with e.g., Photoshop, but I'm not sure about this.

Title: Re: m2ts DateTimeOriginal editing
Post by: Hayo Baan on January 01, 2016, 10:08:44 AM

Ok, I took the time to write a little brute force script that changes the dateTime info in-place. I only had Nikon camera .mov files to test this on, so it might not fully work for you.

Anyway, first some info: there are many places where datetime info is stored in a .mov, for instance when I search for all datetime fields in a test file, here's what I get (-s to show tag names as used internally by exiftool, -a to show duplicate tags, -G0:1 to get group info):

ExifTool Forum

General => Metadata => Topic started by: ganymede55 on December 30, 2015, 06:10:54 PM