Error 0x88982F52: There is too much metadata to be written to the bitmap

[matichukfamily]

I'm not really and exiftool user, just John Q Public that is trying to add tags to favorite photos (and with a spouse that takes A LOT of photos).
While trying to add tags using File Explorer (in Windows 10), on a few files I get the message "Error 0x88982F52: There is too much metadata to be written to the bitmap".  I downloaded the exiftool and think I correctly tried to add a comment with a "file updated" message in response.  However, when investigating the file with File Explorer, the comment was not added.
Any help or experience or thoughts?

[matichukfamily]

FYI, I tried to add a comment with the following command line based on the examples in the exiftool help:
exiftool -Comment="This is a new comment" a.jpg

[matichukfamily]

I found something that "resolved" the issue after several attempts.  Attempts that did NOT work included: adding comment with exiftool, making a copy of the file, copying the file to a different storage device.
What did "resolve" the error was to edit the picture, cropping just a few pixels from one side and saving it as a new file.  Adding tags and a rating worked fine on the new file.

I would be curious if someone can explain that. 
I found very few references to this error on the internet, but some seemed to reference a limitation on the JPEG block size.

[StarGeek]

I downloaded the exiftool and think I correctly tried to add a comment with a "file updated" message in response.  However, when investigating the file with File Explorer, the comment was not added.

Windows doesn't read the Comment tag in jpegs.  It's a pretty fragile and useless tag and gets overwritten frequently by various software.  To get something to show up in the Windows property "Comment", you need to write to either EXIF:UserComment, XMP:UserComment, or EXIF:XPComment.  See this post for the full list of tags<->Windows properties relationships.

Take note of the fact that these tags have very little support in software other than Windows.  A better place to put information would be in something like the XMP:Description tag, which Windows inappropriately calls "Title".

It's up to you if you want to continue "fixing" your jpegs that way, but understand that when you resave a jpeg like that, it degrades the image quality.

I would suggest trying a this to fix the jpgs.  Install irfanview and install the plugin pack.  The plugin pack contains a plugin for lossless jpeg functions.  Load up an offending jpeg and select Options Menu -> Jpeg Lossless rotation.  You can then set it like this example and it will rewrite the jpeg without losing any data.  Hopefully, after that, Windows will be able to read/write the file correctly. 


If it works, you can then do this to all your jpegs in bulk by hitting the File Menu -> Thumbnails to select all the images you want to process.

[matichukfamily]

Thank you for that suggestion.  I had tried IrfanView, but did not have the plugin.
Fortunately, so far I have only seen this phenomenon on less than five files out of several thousands.
I will keep your IrfanView suggestion in mind if I see it again.