Happy new Year! And MOV files

[Mac2]

Just to be sure: can ExifTool update existing EXIF data in MOV files produced by a Canon device?

I've looked at the supported file format page and MOV is listed as R/W with the "Non-standard format" footnote...(?)

The problem I'm trying to solve is that writing XMP metadata into the MOV works fine, but none of the data (especially time stamps with time zone offsets) is synched back to the native EXIF data when I run the XMP2EXIF.args file.

As a work-around I can use Handbrake to re-encode the MOV into a MP4. This gets rid of the EXIF data. Then just copy the XMP over from the original file. It has the interesting EXIF data in the XMP::exif namespace.

[Phil Harvey]

The EXIF in Canon images may be stored in the embedded ThumbnailImage.  If it is, you should be able to update the EXIF by extracting this thumbnail, writing the tags to it, then writing the thumbnail back to the MOV file.

I can't remember offhand if there is an easier way to do this, but you can run some tests yourself.  Extracting tags with the -G5 option will give you more information about where things are stored.

- Phil

[wywh]

My apps ignore EXIF in those Canon thumbnails. But you can edit them with something like:

Code Select Expand

exiftool -ThumbnailImage -b movie.mov | exiftool -Time:All='2020:01:01 12:00:00' -TimeZone='-05:00' -TimeZoneCity='New York' -DaylightSavings=Off -wm w - | exiftool -ThumbnailImage'<=-' movie.mov

Code Select Expand

exiftool -a -G1 -s -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -Time:All movie.mov
[...]
[IFD0]          ModifyDate                      : 2020:01:01 12:00:00
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2020:01:01 12:00:00
[ExifIFD]       CreateDate                      : 2020:01:01 12:00:00
[Canon]         TimeZone                        : -05:00
[Canon]         TimeZoneCity                    : New York
[Canon]         DaylightSavings                 : Off
- Matti

[Mac2]

Interesting. Thank you!

I also now tend to doing a check and ignoring EXIF data these Canon files. Solves the problem without being too much of a disruption of my metadata processing workflow.