Can't move images - followed examples...

[mrmoosehead]

Now then. Love what the tool does, but can't get it to do what I want.

I've had a butchers at the FAQ and the old forum, but that's a bit tricky.

Following the instructions on http://www.exiftool.org/filename.html I can't get the tool to process any images from my directory to a new one. I'm wondering if I've misunderstood something somewhere in your documentation, or whether it's windoze 7 playing silly buggers.
Anyway, i've tried variations on this:

C:\>exiftool.exe -v "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d "%Y/%m/%d" "C
:\Users\bernard\Pictures\EOS\tmp"

What I'm trying to achieve is replacing the awful image downloaders that come with cameras, and also the fact that my 350D software is borked on W7.

I want to be able to specify a source dir, and destination directory, a subdir format and filename format based on original date and copy the images accordingly.
I can write the app to do all that bar the exiftool commandline, and I'm stumped there.

Where am I going wrong?

[Phil Harvey]

Your command looks good to me, and it should work as long as there are files in the tmp directory which contain the DateTimeOriginal tag.  What is the output from your command?  Also, what do you get from this command?:

C:\>exiftool.exe -DateTimeOriginal "C:\Users\bernard\Pictures\EOS\tmp"

- Phil

[mrmoosehead]

Hmm.

C:\>exiftool.exe -DateTimeOriginal "C:\Users\Public\Pictures\EOS\tmp" works

but exiftool.exe -v "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d "%Y/%m/%d" "C
:\Users\Public\Pictures\EOS\tmp" fails on first one.

======== C
:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp
Setting new values from C
:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp
Error: Error opening file - C
:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp
    0 image files updated
    1 files weren't updated due to errors

[mrmoosehead]

Hmm. Curious.

exiftool -v "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d "C:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/%Y/%m/%Y_%m_%d" "C:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp"

Works.

exiftool -v -o "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d "C:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/%Y/%m/%Y_%m_%d" "C:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp"

Doesn't. I thought -o was supposed to force a move? Ah, but the Directory tag takes precendence?


OK, so I can force a move with writing the copyright tag.
exiftool -v -copyright="MrMoosehead" "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d "C:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/%Y/%Y_%m/%Y_%m_%d" "C:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp"


Wierd.

[Phil Harvey]

======== C
:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp
Setting new values from C
:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp
Error: Error opening file - C
:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp
    0 image files updated
    1 files weren't updated due to errors

Somehow (although I don't understand how) it seems like you got a linefeed in the filename after the "C" and before the ":".  But it seems you now have a command that works.

exiftool -v -o "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d "C:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/%Y/%m/%Y_%m_%d" "C:/Users/Public/Pictures/EOS/tmp"

Doesn't. I thought -o was supposed to force a move? Ah, but the Directory tag takes precendence?

The -o option requires a directory name as an argument, but since you are overriding this directory you can specify any directory name here.  Using -o dummy/ as in example 5 here will do.

And yes, writing any "real" tag also forces the file to be duplicated because the file is modified and exiftool always preserves the original by default unless -overwrite_original is used.

- Phil