Warning message: Could not read Exif DateTimeOriginal tag

[Fred85]

Hi there! I'm totally new here and need help with a little problem. I'm using ExifTool with the package camtrapR in R to readout metadtata from a huge set of camera trap pictures. This works perfectly but for a few pictures I get a warning message:

Warning: Could not read Exif DateTimeOriginal tag of 1 image(s) at station Test . Will omit them. Consider checking for corrupted Exif metadata.
D:/TAGGED/082_TAG/Test/I_00072a (2).JPG

When drag and drop the picture to exiftool(-k).exe I can read out the DateTimeOriginal tag and that looks perfectly fine for me:

Date/Time Original              : 2019:03:31 02:13:25

I add the picture that causes the problem to this post. Maybe somebody can tell me what's wrong with this file.

Thanks alot and best

Fred

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Fred,

This file has a few problems, but they are minor and don't involve DateTimeOriginal:

Code Select Expand

> exiftool tmp/I_00072a\ \(2\).JPG -validate -warning -a
Validate                        : 6 Warnings (2 minor)
Warning                         : [minor] Non-standard IFD0 tag 0x000b ProcessingSoftware
Warning                         : Non-standard format (string) for ExifIFD 0x9286 UserComment
Warning                         : Invalid EXIF text encoding for UserComment
Warning                         : [minor] Fixed incorrect URI for xmlns:MicrosoftPhoto
Warning                         : Missing required JPEG ExifIFD tag 0x9101 ComponentsConfiguration
Warning                         : Missing required JPEG ExifIFD tag 0xa000 FlashpixVersion

- Phil

[Fred85]

Thanks Phil for the incredibly fast reply and of course thanks for this enormously helpful tool!
I repeated your command with a file that works without any warnings and interestingly I get exactly the same result. That's why I expect the reason for the warning somewhere else. Do you have another hint for me what could cause this warning? I add both files again – the one from my post before is only renamed.

I_00071a_(2).JPG - is the one that works well
I_00072a_(2).JPG - is the one with the warning message (which is skipped by camtrapR)

C:\Users\Fred\Desktop\test>exiftool I_00072a_(2).JPG -validate -warning -a
Validate                        : 6 Warnings (2 minor)
Warning                         : [minor] Non-standard IFD0 tag 0x000b ProcessingSoftware
Warning                         : Non-standard format (string) for ExifIFD 0x9286 UserComment
Warning                         : Invalid EXIF text encoding for UserComment
Warning                         : [minor] Fixed incorrect URI for xmlns:MicrosoftPhoto
Warning                         : Missing required JPEG ExifIFD tag 0x9101 ComponentsConfiguration
Warning                         : Missing required JPEG ExifIFD tag 0xa000 FlashpixVersion

C:\Users\Fred\Desktop\test>exiftool I_00071a_(2).JPG -validate -warning -a
Validate                        : 6 Warnings (2 minor)
Warning                         : [minor] Non-standard IFD0 tag 0x000b ProcessingSoftware
Warning                         : Non-standard format (string) for ExifIFD 0x9286 UserComment
Warning                         : Invalid EXIF text encoding for UserComment
Warning                         : [minor] Fixed incorrect URI for xmlns:MicrosoftPhoto
Warning                         : Missing required JPEG ExifIFD tag 0x9101 ComponentsConfiguration
Warning                         : Missing required JPEG ExifIFD tag 0xa000 FlashpixVersion

[Phil Harvey]

That's crazy.  The files are nearly identical in terms of metadata structure as far as I can tell.

I can't see any reason why one would be rejected.  Perhaps camtrapR doesn't like 2:13 am on March 31st for some reason.  I suggest asking the camtrapR support about this.  But you could investigate yourself by using ExifTool to write various times to these two files to see if you can figure out what camtrapR doesn't like.

- Phil

[Fred85]

Thanks Phil! The warning was really caused by "DateTimeOriginal". Like you supposed CamptrapR do not like March 31st at 02:13. I can change the timestamp of the pictures to another timepoint using the camtrapR function timeShiftImages but it's not possible to use this function to change the time back to 02:13. After changing the timestamp to March 31st at 01:13 I can easily read out the metadata.

I will inform the camtrapR authors about this bug.

Best

Fred