Only if DateTimeOriginal is missing..

[tdiaz]

I'd like to set DateTimeOriginal to the Filesystem created date entry if there is no existing entry, and only if it was updated, to also add a keyword to reflect that:

Something along the lines of:

exiftool -r -if "not $datetimeoriginal" -metadatadate="FileCreatedDate" -keywords+=DateMissing DIR

I'm unsure how to build the syntax for that .. 

I presume the syntax would be similar for other missing data, (eg: Camera Model = "Mine" if there is no existing value) as well.

[StarGeek]

You're pretty close, just some minor details to work out.   

exiftool -r -if "not $DateTimeOriginal" "-DateTimeOriginal<FileCreateDate" -keywords+=DateMissing DIR

The equal sign is used to assign a static value to a tag.  In your case, you want to copy one tag to another, so you have to use the greater/less than sign. 

[tdiaz]

Something isn't jiving ..


ICBM:4 tdiaz$ exiftool -d "%r %a, %B %e, %Y" -DateTimeOriginal -S -s *.JPG
======== DSCN0042 copy.JPG
09:10:36 pm Mon, January  5, 2004
======== DSCN0042.JPG
09:10:36 pm Mon, January  5, 2004
======== IMG_2806.JPG
08:56:41 am Tue, January 19, 2010
======== IMG_2807.JPG
09:18:56 am Tue, January 19, 2010
======== IMG_2809.JPG
09:19:42 am Tue, January 19, 2010
======== IMG_3004 copy.JPG
======== IMG_3004.JPG
======== IMG_3005.JPG
======== IMG_3006.JPG
    9 image files read

ICBM:4 tdiaz$ exiftool -r -if "not $DateTimeOriginal" "-DateTimeOriginal<FileCreateDate" -keywords+=DateMissing .
    1 directories scanned
   10 files failed condition
    0 image files read

[StarGeek]

Replace double quotes with single quotes when not on Windows.  Also, if on linux, there is no FileCreateDate from what I understand.  You'll have to use something else, maybe FileModifyDate?  If on Mac, I think you can use MDItemFSCreationDate.

Try running exiftool -time:all -g1 -a -s to see all the time tags and figure out which one is the one that would work for you.

[tdiaz]

Funny thing, there .. with the double quotes. It worked on other things. ;-)

Got it figured out. All good. Thanks!

[tdiaz]

This is what I ended up with:

exiftool -r -if 'not $DateTimeOriginal' '-DateTimeOriginal<FileModifyDate' '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal' -keywords+=DateMissing1  -make="SONY" -model="Mavica FD-71" '-country=Japan' '-city=Tokyo' -overwrite_original . ;exiftool -r  '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal'  -overwrite_original .

How can I get that second command to only happen if one of the keywords in the file is "MissingDate1"? As I can't seem to get it to set the FileModifyDate back, or leave it alone within the initial command.

A couple of variances I've tried:

exiftool -r -if '-keywords=*DateMissing1*'  '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal'  -overwrite_original .
exiftool -r -if '-keywords=DateMissing1'  '-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal'  -overwrite_original .

[StarGeek]

Funny thing, there .. with the double quotes. It worked on other things. ;-)

It has to do with the bash shell.  Bash interprets dollar signs as a variable when enclosed in double quotes.  You can use double quotes otherwise, but it's just good practice to use single quotes on Mac/Linux.

The argument to the -if option is basically a Perl expression (see -if docs).

The simplest thing you can do is use a Perl regex to get a match -if '$Keywords=~/MissingDate1/'