Change in config file required

[Harald]

Hi Phil,

almost there. The script works very well now and does everything it is supposed to do. So it was indeed related to the version. 

It does give a warning fairly often though which reads:
ITPCDigest is not current. XMP might be out of sync.

I noticed that when outputting all metadata with exiftool -G .
it then sometimes starts applying parts of the metadata as command, resulting in something like
"Caption-Abstact" is not recognised as a command or .BAT file.

Any idea where this comes from?

kind regards,
Harald

_____________________________

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Harald,

ITPCDigest is not current. XMP might be out of sync.

Something has updated the IPTC without updating IPTCDigest, which means that it probably didn't update the corresponding XMP so the XMP could be out of date.  To fix this properly requires you to decide whether you prefer the XMP or IPTC, then update the out-of-date information and set the IPTCDigest.

I noticed that when outputting all metadata with exiftool -G .
it then sometimes starts applying parts of the metadata as command, resulting in something like
"Caption-Abstact" is not recognised as a command or .BAT file.

What exactly is your command?  And how are you executing the command?  (From a .bat file it seems?)

- Phil

[Harald]

The command is the one you made in this thread
exiftool -r -P -overwrite_original_in_place -EXT jpg -EXT jpeg "-iptc:caption-abstract<WebCaptionTag" "-description<WebCaptionTag" .
Does not make a difference whether I call it from a .BAT file or directly.
This produces the warning "ITPCDigest is not current. XMP might be out of sync."

In any case I could not reproduce at this point the problem where suddenly tags were interpreted as commands, so I will close this thread for now. Thanks so much for all your invaluable help, Phil.

[StarGeek]

The IPTCDigest is not current. XMP may be out of sync is there to let you know that the IPTCDigest has been changed from the last time it was set. It is simply a Warning, not an Error.

The purpose of the IPTCDigest to let programs that are aware of this tag know that the IPTC data may no longer match the XMP data.  In this case, the program is supposed to give the IPTC data priority over the XMP data. Lightroom, for example, will ignore XMP data in favor of IPTC data if this is not current.

If you know that the data is in sync, you can fix this warning by using
exiftool -IPTCDigest=new /path/to/files/
You can add that to any command where you are updating both IPTC and XMP data.

Now, here's my opinion.  In the past when XMP was a new standard, this might have been useful.  But XMP support is now much more prevalent. If the programs you use support XMP, then you should ditch the older IPTC IIM/Legacy standard and remove the IPTCDigest.  XMP really is a much better standard.

Myself, even though I still have to use the IPTC standard (seriously, Irfanview, XMP support has been requested for over a decade^†), I just delete the IPTCDigest tag.  It's just wasted space.

You can delete the IPTCDigest with this command
exiftoool -IPTCDigest= /path/to/files/

SG edit: Since this is a post that I often link to, I will occasionally edit it if I feel it needs updating or to clarify points.

†. Irfanview finally added read only support for XMP data from some file types.