Is creation date reported differently on Mac vs Windows ?

[calin]

Hi.

I have a bunch of JPGs on a NAS.

Running exiftool on them from my Mac, I don't get any "Creation Date" tag.
Running exiftool from Windows (on Bootcamp on the same Mac) gives me a "Creation Date" which seems to be the file creation date.

What can explain this ?

There might be a difference in the versions of exiftool, the Mac one was installed last year, the Windows one I installed a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you.

[StarGeek]

From the FileCreateDate entry on the Extra Tags page
   On Mac, this tag is extracted only if it or the MacOS group is specifically requested or the RequestAll API option is set to 2 or higher. Requires "setfile" for writing on Mac, which may be installed by typing xcode-select --install in the Terminal)

[calin]

Hi,

Thanks for the prompt reply, but this raised another question for me, because my knowledge of various tags is quite limited.

Could the "Creation Date" contain the date when the photo/video was taken and which is different from the file creation date ? Meaning when the file itself gets copied/moved from one device/HD to another, sometimes the file creation date changes, but this shouldn't impact the metadata (content) of the file.

Or is this tag just the file attribute that we can also see when we do "ls" or "dir" in the terminal ?

Thank you again.

[StarGeek]

Could the "Creation Date" contain the date when the photo/video was taken and which is different from the file creation date ? Meaning when the file itself gets copied/moved from one device/HD to another, sometimes the file creation date changes, but this shouldn't impact the metadata (content) of the file.

Or is this tag just the file attribute that we can also see when we do "ls" or "dir" in the terminal ?

Thank you again.

It depends upon if you're looking at the "Creation Date" through Finder or with exiftool.  Using the command FAQ #3 is best for accuracy as it will show both the Group the tag belongs to and any tags with duplicate names.

In videos, there can be three tags that could be "Creation Date" and I don't know which one you're actually looking at.  There's the CreateDate, which will hold the time the video was created in UTC. A lot of video editing software ignore this and it ends up with all 0s in that case. The CreationDate, which is rarely used and would hold the time the video was created locally and should include a time zone otherwise Apple Photos chokes on it.  And there's the FileCreateDate which is the file system time stamp.  This is what ls or dir will display.  That holds the time the file was created and can change depending upon how the file was created on the computer.  For example, a file downloaded from the internet will be set to the time of that download.  If the file was copied from a flash drive, it most likely will have the original time the file was created.  There are other possible "Creation Dates" that could be in the file such EXIF or XMP, but those are less common and less likely to be read by most programs.