Geotagging not working with Panasonic Lumix GH6

[romanholiday]

While Adobe DNG Converter has had its own issues, StarGeek's idea is a good one.

However, I've had time to settle down a bit and may consider an ExifTool patch to keep the raw data at a fixed offset.  I've always resisted this because it will limit what you are able to write to the file, but maybe I should try this here.

Can you tell me if the following ExifTool-edited file can be opened in your viewers?:

https://exiftool.org/tmp/test_fixed_offset.rw2

- Phil

This trick worked! So I can batch convert the RAW files to DNG and then tag them as normal. Any disadvantage to this? Is anything lost in the DNG file?

Thanks 

[Phil Harvey]

Thanks all.

Wow, what a mess!

So the Panasonic software I tested and Adobe software can open the edited file, but MacOS 12.6, GraphicConverter and Affinity Photo can't.  Maybe I should have posted the original for comparison, but I think at this point I don't think it makes sense to try to add write support for this type of file. 

The best option is to convert to DNG.  This is what I do with my D500 NEF files (just because my version of LightRoom won't open them), but check to be sure they contain all the metadata you want because the DNG converter drops some makernote information for some models.

- Phil

[romanholiday]

Affinity Photo can't open normal untouched files from the GH6 anyway - the same yellow/green garbage is displayed. So I think you new method is working... 

[Phil Harvey]

OK, so that gives me some hope.  Here is the original file.  It needs to be tested on MacOS 12.6 and GraphicConverter:

https://exiftool.org/tmp/original_gh6.rw2

- Phil

[wywh]

Here is the original file.  It needs to be tested on MacOS 12.6 and GraphicConverter:
https://exiftool.org/tmp/original_gh6.rw2

macOS 12.6 Preview.app, Photos.app or QuickLook or GraphicConverter 11.6.2 can not open it.

- Matti

[Phil Harvey]

OK, thanks.  So it seems that all tested apps behave the same for the edited file and the original file.

I guess that's a "go" then.  I'll look into adding this patch, even though I am philosophically opposed to patches like this because writing will fail (and ExifTool will have to return an error) if you try to add metadata which is too large to fit before the fixed position of the raw data in the file.

- Phil

[Phil Harvey]

Patch complete, but it requires more testing.

Do you have the ability to run the pure Perl version of ExifTool?  (ie. Do you have Perl installed?)  I have uploaded a patched version of the pure-Perl ExifTool distribution for testing.  This version maintains a fixed offset for the raw data in these images:

https://exiftool.org/Image-ExifTool-12.46p.tar.gz

With this version you will get the following error if you try to write metadata that is too large:

Code Select Expand

Error: Metadata too large to fit before fixed-offset image data
but if the metadata fits, you will get a warning like this:

Code Select Expand

Warning: [minor] Adding 15370 bytes of padding before fixed-offset image data
SilkyPix can load my sample GH6 and GH5M2 RW2 files after editing it with this version, but I haven't done any other testing yet.

- Phil

[romanholiday]

I have a Mac and I did a "which exiftool" and it is located in /usr/local/bin. It is just one executable file:-

-rwxr-xr-x 1 myusername wheel 304K Jul 21 03:31 exiftool

It is version 12.44.

Then I renamed this exiftool to exiftool_old and I uncompressed your archive and moved just the one file from there "exiftool" to /usr/local/bin.

When I run "exiftool -ver" it says:-

12.46 [Warning: Library version is 12.44]

Have I done something wrong?

[romanholiday]

It seems that as well as the file "exiftool", the whole directory "lib" also needs to be copied to /usr/local/bin. So again I renamed my existing "lib" to "lib_old" and copied the new "lib" to /usr/local/bin.

Now it says:-

12.46 (pre-release)

So I guess I have it successfully installed? Should I start playing with it?

[Phil Harvey]

Yes, start playing.

But you didn't need to copy it to /usr/local/bin -- you can run the new version of ExifTool from anywhere (see the very first Note at the top of the Installation page).

- Phil

[romanholiday]

Looks good so far... 

[romanholiday]

Hi again,

Is this fix included in the just released 12.49?

 

[Phil Harvey]

From the version history:

Oct. 1, 2022 - Version 12.46 - "Write WEBP"
  - Added the abilty to write Panasonic GH6 RW2 files

- Phil

[romanholiday]

So since 12.46? Nice! 

[romanholiday]

Why is the "production" release still 12.42?