MakerNotes for Google Pixel phones

[bjg222]

I'm trying to read the metadata from the photos taken on my phone, a Google Pixel 2 XL.  Whenever I try and read any of them with exiftool, I get a warning about an unknown MakerNotes format: Unrecognized MakerNotes.  After scouring Google trying to figure out how to decode the MakerNotes, I've come up empty.  Most of the Google results lead right back to ExifTool's documentation pages and the rest are high level questions about what metadata is in general.  The Pixel series is listed in the types of MakerNotes recognized by ExifTool (https://exiftool.org/makernote_types.html), and the data shown when I use the -htmldump option seems to match that table.  Any advice on how I read this data?  Is there a certain option I should be using to decode it?  If exiftool doesn't support reading the Pixel series MakerNotes, I'm happy to help decipher them, I'm just not sure where to start.  Thanks!

[Phil Harvey]

If you can recognize anything in the makernotes that changes with camera settings, please let me know.  I'll take a look when I get a chance, but I don't know how much useful information there will be.  In general smartphones don't write much useful stuff to the makernotes.

- Phil

[bjg222]

Ok, thanks.  I've got tons of pictures taken with my phone, so if I have the time, I'll try and set up something to scan through them and see if I can find differences.  My D600 puts a ton of info in the MakerNotes, so I guess that was my main interest, but if smartphones don't do that, then it's prob not as useful as I'd hoped.

Billy