Strange warning with O.Betz exiftool.exe 12.57

[herb]

Hello Phil, hello Oliver

On my Windows 10 system I get the following warning for a file taken by Apples iPhone 7:

Warning   RawConv TimeZone: Use of uninitialized value in subtraction (-)

I used the following command:

Code Select Expand

exiftool.exe -a -all:all -g0 -validate -use mwg apple_iphone7.jpg
Please find the image attached.

I could not reproduce this behaviour with Phil's Exiftool.exe (for Windows).

Best regards
herb

[Phil Harvey]

I don't think you can possibly get this warning for a JPG image.  Are you sure it wasn't a MP4 or HEIC file?

- Phil

[herb]

Hello Phil,

I don't think you can possibly get this warning for a JPG image.  Are you sure it wasn't a MP4 or HEIC file?

Please do a test with the attached file. As far as I can see, it is JPG

Thanks for your investigations in advance.
Best regards
herb

[Phil Harvey]

I did test it (on a Mac though) and didn't get the warning.  Also, the file doesn't contain TimeZone information, which would be required for that warning to be a possibility.

- Phil

[herb]

Hello Phil,

thanks for your investigations.
On one hand I agree: Looking into the output of -htmldump I also did not see a timezone
But displaying all tags (with your ExifTool.exe) it shows: composite:timezone: -17:15

For me it looks like, it depends on the version of Perl used. I only know that Perl used by O. Betz and Perl used by your *.exe is different.

Best regards
herb

[Phil Harvey]

But displaying all tags (with your ExifTool.exe) it shows: composite:timezone: -17:15

Two things:

1. You must be used a custom config file because there is no pre-defined Composite TimeZone tag. (So my guess is that you are seeing a config file difference and not an ExifTool version difference.)

2. Composite tags shouldn't define a RawConv, so I still don't see how you could get this warning.

- Phil

[herb]

Hello Phil,

thanks for your help, thanks for your investigations again.
Yes, you are right, I use a user-defined configfile, which contains a predefined Composite-tag TimeZone.
But Official-ExifTool.exe and O.Betz-Exiftool.exe use an identical config.file.

The TimeZone tag is copied from time-zone.config file which is part of official Perl-distribution.
It contains a RawConv.

Repeating all tests with this time_zone.config file you will see
- the warning with O.Betz-Exiftool.exe and
- TimeZone value -17:15 with Official-Exiftool.exe.

Thanks again for your help.
Best regards
herb

[Phil Harvey]

OK, now we are finally getting somewhere.  I can how how this warning could be possible when using a different version of Perl, but it isn't something I think will cause any problems.

If I could reproduce the problem I could patch the config file to avoid this, but I don't think it is worthwhile for me to spend time trying to reproduce this.

- Phil

[obetz]

since I don't fully understand the problem and all this RawConv / config stuff:

Please let me know if this is a problem of my distribution and whether I should dig deeper into this.

Oliver

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Oliver,

There's nothing to indicate a problem in your distribution.

- Phil

[obetz]

Thanks, Phil.

BTW: If ever a problem arises, feel free to inform me by email, as I sometimes don't read the forum for weeks.

[Phil Harvey]

Oliver,

Will do, thanks.

- Phil