How to clean up EXIF error?

[Joanna Carter]

I'm getting the following message in my debug log when my app reads certain (about a dozen out of several thousands) image files...

CreateMetadataFromXMPBufferInternal:603:  Threw error #203 (Duplicate property or field node)

Any ideas how to find this duplicate info and remove it?

I don't see anything obvious using ExifTool from the macOS terminal.

Joanna

[Joanna Carter]

I suddenly had a bright idea.

I copied the output of exiftool -a -G filename.ext to a spreadsheet and filtered and organised the columns that gave me. The number in the end column is the count of how many times the tag appears

[EXIF]          Resolution Unit                 : inches	2
[MakerNotes]    Camera Temperature              : 26 C	2
[MakerNotes]    Chromatic Aberration Corr       : Off	2
[MakerNotes]    Color Temperature               : 5200	2
[MakerNotes]    Focal Length                    : 135 mm	2
[MakerNotes]    Focus Distance Lower            : 26.34 m	2
[MakerNotes]    Focus Distance Upper            : 47.81 m	2
[MakerNotes]    Lens Type                       : Canon EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS	2
[MakerNotes]    Max Focal Length                : 200 mm	2
[MakerNotes]    Min Focal Length                : 18 mm	2
[MakerNotes]    Picture Style                   : Faithful	2
[MakerNotes]    White Balance                   : Daylight	2
[XMP]           Artist                          : JCh.	7
[XMP]           Compression                     : Compression JPEG	7
[XMP]           Copyright                       : JCh.. (Photographe) - [Aucun] (Éditeur)	7
[XMP]           Date Time                       : 2019:06:27 08:52:22	4
[XMP]           Date Time                       : 2020:06:17 22:41:21	2
[XMP]           Make                            : Canon	7
[XMP]           Model                           : Canon EOS 600D	7
[XMP]           Orientation                     : En haut à gauche	7
[XMP]           Primary Chromaticities          : 0,64, 0,33, 0,21, 0,71, 0,15, 0,06	7
[XMP]           Rating                          : 0	8
[XMP]           Resolution Unit                 : pouces	14
[XMP]           White Point                     : 0,313, 0,329	7
[XMP]           X Resolution                    : 72	14
[XMP]           Y Cb Cr Coefficients            : 0,299, 0,587, 0,114	7
[XMP]           Y Cb Cr Positioning             : Co-sited	7
[XMP]           Y Resolution                    : 72	14

So, now I know which tags are duplicated, how can I remove the dupes?

[Phil Harvey]

I'm guessing the error is only due to duplicate XMP properties.  You could try this, but if there are any non-standard XMP properties they will be deleted:

exiftool -xmp:all= -tagsfromfile @ -xmp:all FILE

This is similar to FAQ 20 which describes rebuilding corrupted EXIF.

- Phil

[Joanna Carter]

Thank you for the initial direction.

In fact, what I ended up doing was to run

exiftool -tagsfromfile filename.jpg -xmp filename.xmp

Opened the xmp file in TextEdit, copied the text to a spreadsheet which gave me a single column, sorted the table on that column, spotted and removed the duplicate rows, saved the file and then ran

exiftool -tagsfromfile filename.xmp -xmp filename.jpg

Fortunately, there were only five files in the end.

BTW, most of the errant tags were actually marked <exif:... not <xmp:... as I had expected, although the xmp:Rating tag was also duplicated.

I do wonder what software he used to get into this state - I do know he runs Linux on his 'puter.