Nikon scanner maker notes funny business

[pb]

The forum software got mad and hasn't been sending me updates, so maybe this was raised before.

Basically, some garbage in Nikon maker notes was previously shown in gui 4.26 with exiftool 8.74, but is not shown with gui 5.09 with exiftool 8.87.  However, running exiftool 8.87 from the command prompt DOES show that garbage.

I have (many) a big tiff file that came from a Nikon slide scanner.  Due to weirdness on the part of the people who scanned it, it is a multi-page tiff with the 2nd page a preview image.  Since no software seems to like working with multipage, I used ACDSee Pro 5 to strip out the 2nd page.  When I look at the maker notes of the tiff that was processed by ACDSee, one maker note item has some garbage appended, namely octal 214 225 227, as reported by exiftool 8.87 from the command line.  In gui 4.26, such garbage was also shown (interpreted as some random character or characters).  In gui 5.09, it is no longer shown.

This is in the maker notes for Nikon called "Nikon Capture Version".  I haven't noticed garbage anywhere else.

I'm going to guess this is somehow related to utf-8, but it does not make a whole lot of sense to me, so maybe someone can explain?

[pb]

Sorry, I meant gui 5.90, NOT 5.09.

[pb]

Sorry, I meant gui 5.9, NOT 5.09.

Wait, this is confusing.  The running version of gui reports itself as 5.9.0.0, but the forum entry announcing it, and the file name indicate 5.09.  Which one is correct?  Or does 5.9 = 5.09 in this case?

--p.

[BogdanH]

Hi,

Sorry about confusion with version numbering. To my knowledge, Windows mechanism doesn't support leading zeroes for displaying that info. So
5.9.0.0 -should be interpreted as "5.09"
5.90.0.0 -is (will be) "5.90"
-the same is true if displaying file info in Windows Explorer.

I could add leading zeroes manually, when displaying in "About", but then, "About" and "File info" would show different values...

Bogdan

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Bogdan,

exiftool.exe version 8.87 uses Windows version number 8.8.7.0

Maybe it would be less confusing if you used this convention?

- Phil

[BogdanH]

Hi Phil,

Yes, I should do it that way -now that you're saying  But, being at "09" right now, next version will clear that confusion.

Bogdan

[pb]

Hey, guys, thanks for clearing up the numbering issue, but what about my original question about the extra characters in the Nikon maker notes?

--peter

[Phil Harvey]

ACDSee is one of those applications with a bad reputation for corrupting maker notes.  Other bad ones are Picasa (which corrupts them more often), and Photoshop (which deletes them entirely).

Without seeing the image I can't be sure, but I suspect this is the reason for the funny characters in the NikonCaptureVersion tag after editing with ACDSee.

- Phil

[pb]

I assumed that ACDSee was corrupting the maker notes, and I've complained to them about it.  (I've also observed that photoshop strips them out altogether, at least the old version I use.)  Thanks for making me aware of their reputations.

But, the main reason I was posting here was to understand why the 4.xx versions of GUI showed the corruption, but the 5.09 version does not show it, even though exiftool is outputting that corruption when I run it myself from the command line.

The images I've observed this on are 130MB, so it's not easy to send you an image, but if you're interested I could send the metadata, though in that case it would help if you saved me the trouble of discovering how to excise it.

But, probably my question is more in Bogdan's court, since it seems to revolve around something the gui is doing with exiftool's output.

--peter

[BogdanH]

Hi Peter,

I'm guessing now: the main difference between v4 and v5 is, v5 is expecting UTF-8 encoded characters in Exif (as recommended by MWG). Meaning, if Makernotes contain non-ASCII characters (encoded as ANSI), then there will be problem.
I think, I could see if that's your case, if you post "mie" file here.

Bogdan