Command line help to copy User Comment data

[StarGeek]

CMD will have only the directory path as the prompt as shown by your examples of C:\1-TEMP\EXIFtool>

PowerShell has a leading PS, which would be PS C:\1-TEMP\EXIFtool>

What is the result of
exiftool -G1 -a -s -Subject -XPKeywords -sep ## -php file.jpg

[FionaC]

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C:\1-TEMP\EXIFtool>exiftool -G1 -a -s -Subject -XPKeywords -sep ## -php *.jpg
Array(Array(
  "SourceFile" => "IMGP1720.JPG",
  "IFD0:XPKeywords" => "Dad"
));

[FionaC]

Image file sent to Phil

[StarGeek]

Ok, that's just weird.

I was guessing that there were some invisible characters at the end of the tag. These are often revealed by using the -php or the -json options. But there isn't anything there. And I've been unable to reproduce the problem by adding trailing spaces and non-break spaces.

Hopefully Phil will find something.

[Phil Harvey]

What version of ExifTool are you using?  The current version gives this for the file you sent with StarGeek's command:

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Array(Array(
  "SourceFile" => "/Users/phil/Desktop/birds/IMGP1720.JPG",
  "IFD0:XPKeywords" => "慄d"
));
The problem is that XPKeywords should be stored as UCS2 or UTF-16, but is actually ASCII, so ExifTool can't read it.

- Phil

[FionaC]

Hi Phil,

I'm using version 13.12 I believe. I downloaded a fresh version this week.

BUT I think the issue you are seeing goes back to one of my original posts about weird characters; and you wrote me a config file that I am still using. Two versions actually; I'm using the 2nd one from your post dated 17 Dec 2013. 

That said, I've not run the command you suggested in your post of 16 Dec 2013; aka

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exiftool -tagsfromfile @ -xpcomment -usercomment DIR
over the directory; prior to copying any of the XP fields to the XMP fields.  When I do (I just did...) it creates a LOT of '.' in the keywords so it obviously has something to do with this character set issue from before...

Again, many thanks!

[Phil Harvey]

I don't have time to read through all the old posts, but now I understand you are using a custom config file to read improperly-formatted XPComment values.

I don't have the time now to sort through all this again.

- Phil

[FionaC]

I'm going to post the solution here for completeness.

I do  not know what the issue was, but this workaround has provided me a solution to whatever weird character thing was going with the random '.'s turning up when I copied XPKeyword to Subject; even if none of us could see any extra characters etc (an error in the original config file perhaps?).

Step 1 - export the EXIF data to a csv file with

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exiftool -csv -exif:all *.jpg >out.csv

Step 2 - open the CSV file, delete the columns I'm not interesting in importing to XMP fields
- rename the columns to the appropriate XMP field names
- 'find and replace' in the XPKeyword field any " " with a ";"
- save the file (I use IN.csv)

Step 3 - import the updated csv file with separators

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exiftool -csv=IN.csv -sep ; *.jpg

Not as perfect as a full command line option. But infinitely better than manually re-entering all the metadata again. :-) Hope it helps someone one day.
Thank you all for your assistance.