querying/writing tag to a list of files (batch processing)

[gcue]

hello

is it possible to write or query a tag to a list of files.. perhaps specified through a text file?

thank you in advance

[Phil Harvey]

Yes.

[gcue]

what does the syntax look like?  can you provide an example?

thanks again

[Phil Harvey]

You'll have to narrow things down a bit.  Your question is too vague.  Do you want to read or write?  What tags?  What format text file?

- Phil

[gcue]

sorry about being vague..

i am trying to read the DateTimeOriginal tag for several thousand files.  i am going to output the file paths to a text file.  so each line would look something like this..

c:\users\smith\desktop\folder\file1.jpg
c:\users\smith\desktop\folder\folder2\file1.jpg
c:\users\jones\desktop\folder\folder7\file1.jpg

i would also like to be able to write the same tag to multiple files as well.

please let me know if i need to specify anything else

thanks again

[Phil Harvey]

So you want to read DateTimeOriginal for all files listed in a text file?  This command will do it:

exiftool -datetimeoriginal -@ file_list.txt

and to write instead of read:

exiftool "-datetimeoriginal=2016:04:19 13:29:00" -@ file_list.txt"

- Phil

[gcue]

that worked! 

thank you for your quick help but most of all... thank you for the AWESOME tool!!!

truly a masterpiece

[gcue]

for the write... is it possible to include unique dates for each entry in the text file?

thanks again!

[Phil Harvey]

Yes.  For this you should look at the -csv option.

- Phil

[gcue]

So glad it can do it. What is the syntax like?  Is it the same as the text file command?  Csv file... first column file path, second column tag and third date/time?

Thank you again for your help

[gcue]

found an example in the forum =)

csv

SourceFile,DateTimeOriginal
C:\Users\Smith\Desktop\New folder1\IMG_0066.JPG,2016:03:07 10:29:00
C:\Users\Smith\Desktop\New folder1\IMG_3894 (1).JPG,2016:03:07 10:20:01

command i am using

Code Select Expand

exiftool -csv="C:\Users\Smith\Desktop\tags.csv" -r "C:\Users\Smith\Desktop\New folder1"

i am curious why this is needed

Code Select Expand

-r "C:\Users\Smith\Desktop\New folder1"

since the location of each file is already specified in the SourceFile column?

thanks again!

[Phil Harvey]

since the location of each file is already specified in the SourceFile column?

Because you specify the files to process on the ExifTool command line for all other types of commands, and I thought it would be confusing to make this different.

- Phil

[gcue]

gotcha ... consistency is good =)

is there a limit with how many files are processed through the txt or csv file?

thanks again for sharing such a powerful program

[Phil Harvey]

There is no limit.

- Phil

[gcue]

i think i may have found a bug?

if the file_list.txt for the -@ switch happens to have only 1 file path it doesn't work

no output or error

i would think it should work because sometimes it's unpredictable how many file paths we can expect there to be in the text file if the text file is generated through a script process

thanks!