Replacing and/or adding metadata from another file.

[Mackenzie RR]

Hi,

I'm trying to figure out how to modify a specific tag in a .mov file so that I can move it into another clip which has lost its metadata. The tag is Apple Proapps Modelname: SIGMA fp. Or at least thats how it appears in Terminal though I've no clue as to how I can target it specifically.

For context, I recently shot some ProRes Raw HQ on an Atomos Ninja V which crashed during the take and thus lost all the metadata from the recovered clip. So the footage I have still exists, but lost the tag mentioned above which I need in order to convert the Prores footage into CDNG using a program called RawConvertor which I got on the app store. The issue is, the app does not recognize the camera that was used and thus won't convert it.

I've attached a couple of images of how this looks in that program (the red clip is the one without the necessary metadata). Using exiftool I've been able to wipe the information (using exiftool -all= ) from (a copy of) the other clip so that now they're both missing the information required. The tricky thing is that I can't find any way to reverse this or copy the required information form a file that isn't corrupt. I've tried to use (exiftool -all=SIGMA fp) and everything gets replaced with SIGMA (missing the fp mind you) yet the tag I'm trying to target is left untouched.

Is there any way I can just force copy in full this line "Apple Proapps Modelname: SIGMA fp" into another clip?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[StarGeek]

The first thing to do is figure out where the data is located and what group it belongs to.  Use the command in FAQ #3.  Once you figure that out, you can use a more targeted approach.  But if you want to take a shotgun approach, you can try copying all the data with this command
exiftool -TagsFromFile Source.Mov -All:All Target.Mov

It is possible that the needed data might be in the EXIF group.  If so, that data can't be copied because EXIF data in a video file is non-standard.

[Mackenzie RR]

Hi StarGeek,

Thanks for your response. I've tried the shotgun approach and still nothing. All I can really do using the -all is to wipe everything from the other file but not replace all that data. Or at least, not with the data I need on the corrupted clip. When I attempt to target the Apple Proapps Modelname as a tag it says that its not defined and I'm not sure how to define it...

[StarGeek]

It sounds like the tags you want to copy are not editable by exiftool.

I'm not sure if it's possible to create a user-defined tag for a video.  I don't recall if the question hasn't come up before.  I suspect that it may not be as videos are more complex than images, but Phil would have to comment on that.

[Phil Harvey]

It is likely you can create a user-defined QuickTime tag for what you want, but I would need to see either a sample or the output of the exiftool -v3 option for a file containing this information.

- Phil