Invoking exiftool.exe programmatically

[JMac]

Hi Phil,
I am looking at developing a small Windows Forms app to do some "housekeeping" on my image metadata.  Using EXIFTOOL.EXE as the engine to read / write the metadata is almost a great solution for me (I'm working in c#/.NET, and using the PERL library is beyond my abilities!).  The issue I have is that it will be very "expensive" to launch exiftool for each file I wan't to process, and using the directory mode doesn't fit my need.  What would be great is if there was a way to invoke exiftool with a list of files and matching of command lines, if that makes sense.

Any thoughts?  exiftool has so many options I may be missing some that is already there.

[Michal]

Hi,
I'm sure Phil will give you the best answer but have you looked at the -execute option? It will allow you to join multiple commands in one command line. Also, have a look at the -@ ARGFILE option to load arguments from a separate file: https://exiftool.org/exiftool_pod.html#option_summary

[Phil Harvey]

I would have suggested the -@ option as Michal has already done (thanks!).

- Phil

[JMac]

Perfect... Probably should have read more the first time.  Thanks to both of you for your help!

[Abedellatif]

Hello,
I am trying to invoke exiftool from within a C# application to edit some EXIF tags by calling the command line exiftool from a new process. tThe tool get invoked correctly but never finish, when I check the Task Manager, in the detail pan, I can see 2 exiftool processes.
1- exiftool.exe with a description of "Read and Write meta information" located in my application folder.
2- exiftool.exe with a description of "exiftool.exe" located in the par-<username> folder.
When checking the  analyze wait chain of the process, it shows that Process 1 (the main tool) is waiting for process 2(the temporary tool in the par-<username> folder.
a screen shot of the detail task manager is attached.
Have anybody face such an issue with exiftool? Any suggestion or help is highly appreciated.
Thanks,
Abedellatif

[Phil Harvey]

This is what I think would happen if ExifTool is waiting for more input.  Did you use the -stay_open option by chance?

- Phil

[Abedellatif]

Thanks a lot for your reply. Unfortunately, I tried the -stay_open option and still have the same behavior, still hangs forever.
Abedellatif

[Phil Harvey]

There is another possibility.  See this thread for details.

If this isn't the problem, then try executing other command-line utilities using the same technique to see if this works.

- Phil

[Abedellatif]

Hello Phil,
I tried your suggestion and still having the same issue. One thing to note is this happens when Exiftool is invoked from particular application that I am working on. I tried invoking Exiftool from a test app and it works fine. I will keep checking on why it is hanging when it is called from this particular app.

Thanks alot.

Abedellatif

[FixEUser]

@JMac: Do you know this thread https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php/topic,5857.0.html ?