Need help changing dates on MTS files

Started by Tyrop, September 13, 2020, 03:12:25 PM

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Tyrop

I have Windows 10. I have thousands of home movies.  They are organized into folders that are named after the date the movies were taken.  Over the years, I copied them to other hard drives.  (I copied the entire directory structure to keep the folder names intact).  I am using Adobe Premiere Elements Organizer, and it shows many of the dates hugely wrong - possibly they are the dates the folders were copied.    The DateTimeOriginal exif entry appears to be correct on all of them, but Adobe apparently ignores that entry. 

I saw other posts on how to copy the DateTimeOriginal to FileModifyDate and FileCreateDate.  I used the following command, but it did not do anything:

ExifTool "-FileCreateDate<DateTimeOriginal" "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" 20110520230206.mts

Attached is a screenshot.  You can see that, after I executed that command line, I viewed the various date entries and the FileCreateDate and FileModifyDate do not match the DateTimeOriginal.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have hundreds of videos that are showing up in my organizer completely out of order.


StarGeek

The file system time stamps are always in the local time for the computer.  2011:05:20 23:02:06-05:00 is the same time as 2011:05:21 00:02:06-04:00, just in a different time zone.

It would be possible to set those timestamps to 2011:05:20 23:02:06, but the timezone will still be -04:00 and if you show the files on a computer in the -05:00 timezone, then the date will shift to 2011:05:20 22:02:06.
* Did you read FAQ #3 and use the command listed there?
* Please use the Code button for exiftool code/output.
 
* Please include your OS, Exiftool version, and type of file you're processing (MP4, JPG, etc).

Tyrop

Thank you!!  I did not know that.  I should have tried the command on a file that had very different dates.  I just tried it and I see it worked!

One more question if it's not too much trouble.  Is there a command line option for ExifTool to go through all subdirectories and change all mts files?  I have hundreds of folders and I'm hoping I don't have to run ExifTool separately in each folder.

   

StarGeek

Use the -r (-recurse) option to recurse into subdirectories.  Add -ext mts to process only MTS files while doing so.  You can't use a wildcard for the filename while recursing, see Common Mistake #2.
* Did you read FAQ #3 and use the command listed there?
* Please use the Code button for exiftool code/output.
 
* Please include your OS, Exiftool version, and type of file you're processing (MP4, JPG, etc).