Hi Phil -
Great program! I discovered the ExifTool and the GUI a few months ago and have been using both in Windows XP to prepare photos for a digital archive. Today I finally tried writing data from a CSV file to a group of 405 photos, all in the same directory. I only wanted to change 103 of those photos, so tried a CSV with only those file names (both file name only and later with the full directory info as the FileSource). I used this command:
exiftool –csv=Raid1028Input.csv –ext *.jpg
All the files processed, but no data was added. Perhaps I could not use a file subset and the input file had to match the output file exactly? So next I did an extract from those photos using this command:
exiftool -csv -r -FileName -FileSize -Title -Identifier -Description -Subject -DateTimeOriginal -relation -keywords e:\DigitalLibrary\USRaid > Raid1029.csv
That worked as expected. I added my new data (some new "titles" and "identifiers") directly into that file, changed the CSV file name to "Raid1029Input.csv" and ran the command: exiftool –csv=Raid1029Input.csv –ext *.jpg
Again, the program ran for a while with many screens flashing by, but no data was added after checking with the ExifTool, as above. I've read similar experiences on this forum, but cannot figure out what I've missed and/or am doing wrong.
BTW, my primary need is to write "accession numbers" to the photos, easily created in Excel -> CSV, to the Identifier metatag for my archive project and later, for a new museum system.
Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
BobS.
Hi Bob,
First, let's' fix the obvious problem and see if things work after that. Your -ext option argument is not correct, and your directories are specified differently for the export and import commands. You need to do something like this based on your CSV export command:
exiftool –csv=Raid1029Input.csv –ext jpg e:\DigitalLibrary\USRaid
The files specified by the command do not have to match up with those in the CSV file. Files on the command line without matching entries in the CSV file won't be processed, and extra files specified in the CSV file have no effect.
- Phil
Hi Phil -
Thanks for the advice. I ran the revised command you suggested and got the same result after checking the file with the ExifTool - nothing new written in the sections I'd like to update: Title and Identifier. I know it will be great when I get this done correctly, but now...
I can cut the files down for test purposes, if you think that would help.
Bob
Hi Bob,
Run the command on a single file with the -v2 option and paste your console log here, and I'll see if I can figure out the problem.
- Phil
Hi Phil -
Thanks very much for your suggestions and your offline help. This command was (finally) successful:
exiftool -csv=Raid1030input.csv -ext jpg e:\DigitalLibrary\USRaid\
The in the "Raid1030input.csv" input file, "SourceFile" has the full path of each photo to be modified. Then it only contains the columns (in Excel before saving to CSV) for "Title" and "Identifier". "Title" was selectively copied from another column for specific photos to be used in a digital archive. All 405 photos now have an "Identifier" done in the style of a museum-type accession number, easily created in Excel.
This will be tremendously useful in the future and I'll continue to sing the praises of the ExifTool to others working on archives.
Cheers!
Bob