Make tag ascii count

[johu]

Hi I am trying to use exiftool to batch set make tag to certain value. I was able to manually do this with leadtools tiff tag editor, but while doing this with exiftool the result is different. I am trying to create a tag with four letters and in tiff tag editor it creates a tag with ascii count 4. If I use exiftool to do this the ascii count is 5. Also using tagfromfile does the same even if the tag is copied from a file that has ascii count 4. This is a problem since they need to be exactly identical in order to behave the same way if files are put in order based on tags.

[Phil Harvey]

The EXIF specification states that ASCII values should be null-terminated.  So if I understand what you are telling me, it seems as if the leadtools tiff tag editor writes the ASCII value incorrectly, because a 4-character ASCII value should be stored with a count of 5 to include the terminator.

- Phil

[johu]

Hi Phil,
the problem is that I have Tiff files with a specific make tag and I need to edit existing Tiff files from another source to have the same make tag with same count in order for them to work the same way. I found also another software that creates tag with the same count as the amount of letters, but again that requires manual editing and I would so much like to do this as a batch process. But judging by what you are telling me this can not be achieved with Exiftool.

[Phil Harvey]

I didn't say you couldn't do it.  I just said it was wrong.

To do this with ExifTool would require overriding the desired tag with a UserDefined tag.  The following config file will do this for EXIF:Make.

Code Select Expand

%Image::ExifTool::UserDefined = (
    'Image::ExifTool::Exif::Main' => {
        0x10f => {
            Name => 'Make',
            Groups => { 2 => 'Camera' },
            DataMember => 'Make',
            # remove trailing blanks and save as an ExifTool member variable
            RawConv => '$val =~ s/\s+$//; $$self{Make} = $val',
            Writable => 'string',
            WriteGroup => 'IFD0',
            # override Format to write without a null terminator (NOTE: non-standard EXIF)
            Format => 'undef',
        },
    },
);
1; # end

- Phil

[johu]

Hi Phil,
thanks. That was not just fast but spot on for my needs!!!