ExifTool Forum

ExifTool => Bug Reports / Feature Requests => Topic started by: gmos01 on May 30, 2014, 06:11:34 AM

Title: Meta data errors with ExifTool after Microsoft Photo Gallery rotation
Post by: gmos01 on May 30, 2014, 06:11:34 AM
After rotating an image with Microsoft Photo Gallery, it adds metadata. After this many original fields disappear and in a "-r -csv" extra bogus output lines may be produced.

I'll mail a zip with the original, the rotated picture and the csv file produced on a directory with just the 2 .jpg files.

I used:
Title: Re: Meta data errors with ExifTool after Microsoft Photo Gallery rotation
Post by: Phil Harvey on May 30, 2014, 07:28:56 AM
I don't have to look at these.  It is well documented that Microsoft products cause corrupted metadata in images.  This is a long standing problem that Microsoft doesn't seem to care about:

"Vista 'Mangles' Metadata" (http://forums.camerabits.com/index.php?topic=1011.0) - Feb. 2007

"Corrupt meta data after annotation sync" (Microsoft Expression Media) (http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/expression/en-US/306466ad-8d4f-43b4-bed7-88542e467166/corrupt-meta-data-after-annotation-sync) - May 2010

"That Makernotes corruption bug was acknowledged by Microsoft a year ago, but it is still there in the latest build of WLPG." (http://gcoupe.wordpress.com/2011/12/10/picasa-versus-windows-live-photo-gallery/) - Dec. 2011

"WLPG Creates Bad Exif Metadata" (http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windowslive/forum/gallery-files/wlpg-creates-bad-exif-metadata-the-saga-continues/0c65bb55-39f0-4f76-ba1a-f4528167abd4) - Feb. 2012

"One of the complaints I have had for a long while about Microsoft's Windows Photo Gallery (WPG) is that, in my experience, it corrupts the Makernotes metadata" (http://gcoupe.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/photo-metadata-tools-the-saga-continues/) - Oct. 2013

- Phil
Title: Re: Meta data errors with ExifTool after Microsoft Photo Gallery rotation
Post by: gmos01 on May 30, 2014, 07:49:24 AM
Thanks Phil, fortunately I have the originals on back-up.

Think there is a related bug in ExifTool though.

If I inspect a Microsoft-PG mangled .jpg file with exiftool -k,  I get mostly correct results with some warnings like: "Warning : [minor] Possibly incorrect maker notes offsets (fix by 3752?)".

However, if I use exiftool -csv -r, I get far less correct data, plus some extra lines of garbage in the output CSV file following the line for the faulty file. See the .csv I have e-mailed.
Title: Re: Meta data errors with ExifTool after Microsoft Photo Gallery rotation
Post by: Phil Harvey on May 30, 2014, 07:54:58 AM
Yes, I saw this CSV file.  It looks fine to me.  There is a (corrupted) value containing funny characters including newlines, but it is properly quoted so it should be valid CSV.

- Phil

Edit:  Oh, wait.  You're saying you get less data.  I'll take a look again...

The only thing I can see that could be a problem is the CSV output contains null characters (binary zeros).  Why do you say you get "far less correct data"?  How are you viewing the CSV data?
Title: Re: Meta data errors with ExifTool after Microsoft Photo Gallery rotation
Post by: gmos01 on May 30, 2014, 08:06:00 AM
My Excel 2013 reads it as 4 lines.

Must be  the Microsoft .csv locale problem.  MS has decided a .csv file in Dutch should use semicolons as a field separator.
No override in Excel, you have to change the locale for the PC.  So in NL we split fields in Excel with tekst-2-columns afterwards. New line escapes won't work in this case.

Thnx, Gijs
Title: Re: Meta data errors with ExifTool after Microsoft Photo Gallery rotation
Post by: gmos01 on May 30, 2014, 08:14:26 AM
Checked the csv in notepad++.
Turned out the "missing" stuff was in one of the subsequent lines at the far end.

So its just CR or LF messing things up due to the locale problem.