IPTC Captions and Keywords for movies

[wywh]

A few years ago I copied all my image-related memos on paper and Excel to IPTC Captions and some people's names to Keywords (I also put a rating so only important images can be filtered). Now also that info travels with the images to relatives as an off-site backup. The following tags are used [edit: initially I thought I was using only IPTC IMM but upon closer inspection also XMP was already filled]:

"[IPTC] Caption-Abstract"
"[XMP-dc] Description"

"[IPTC] Keywords"
"[XMP-dc] Subject"

"[XMP-xmp] Rating"

I then exported the tags back to a spreadsheet as an extra backup -- glancing the info on a spreadsheet is also a fast way to spot errors with the original info. Photos.app reads Captions and Keywords OK but unfortunately iOS Photos currently does not.

I still have an Excel spreadsheet with memos for movies. Are there similar standard Captions and Keywords movie tags I could use for them?

- Matti

[StarGeek]

XMP:Description and XMP:Subject can be used in video files for the caption and keywords, though I'm not sure if they will be read by your Apple app.  Adobe programs will read those.  I would guess that it's more likely that Quicktime:Description will be read.  There is also Quicktime:Keywords but unlike keyword tags in images, it's a simple string, not a list where every keyword is separate.  You'll have to test to see if the Apple app can read it and what character it might use for a separator.

[wywh]

Thanks for the info. I'll test if Photos.app 5.0 can read any of those Captions or Keywords in movies. I'd like to use some standard tag for this info but obviously also this is still lacking from movies.

p.s. in images Captions and Keywords work rather well with Photos.app and Google Photos. But a big headache is that both just read metadata (dates, locations, captions, keywords). But then they selfishly keep any changes to themselves in their own database (Photos.app does export re-compressed images with updated metadata, though, while the originals are cast in stone which I somewhat do understand). So I have to periodically delete and re-upload any updated images so other users' exported images don't have obsolete metadata. And Google Photos strips linebreaks from Captions and truncates long Captions so I have a list which images I must manually paste that info into Google Photos to keep the Captions readable. And sometimes Photos.app and Google Photos stubbornly display the wrong date or a date with no time although the EXIF date should be available (rebuilding EXIF info usually fixes that flaw that randomly plagues Lightroom 6.14 exports). And Google Photos correctly displays only year 1902 or newer while I have images from 1800's. And it is not possible to do a search inside an Google Photos album so other users can not take advantage of the Keywords inside a shared album -- would you believe there is a Google product you can not search?! /rant

[wywh]

You'll have to test to see if the Apple app can read it and what character it might use for a separator.

I tested how Catalina's Photos.app 5.0 reads Captions and Keywords (or should I say Descriptions and Subjects?) by inserting the following tags to mv4, mp4 and mov.

Code Select Expand

[ItemList]      Description                     : ItemList Description
[ItemList]      Title                           : ItemList Title
[UserData]      Description                     : UserData Description
[XMP-dc]        Description                     : XMP-dc Description
[XMP-dc]        Subject                         : XMP-dc Subject

Photos could read only the Description and it was quite picky about that:

"[ItemList] Description" almost only from m4v (Final Cut Pro 10.4.8 automatically fills that, too).

"[UserData] Description" only from mp4 (Final Cut Pro 10.4.8 automatically fills that, too).

Somehow Photos displayed none of the tags from iOS 7 & 9 & Canon 6D mov files. Only one iOS mov displayed "[ItemList] Description" but I am not sure of that mov's exact origins.

-Quicktime:Description was written in that "[ItemList] Description". -Quicktime:Keywords was written into "[Keys] Keywords" and Photos.app didn't read that.

Code Select Expand

[ItemList]      Description                     : Quicktime Description
[Keys]          Keywords                        : Quicktime Keywords

So currently the support for Descriptions is severely lacking and spotty in Photos.app.

...so maybe I should start adding missing locations to movies while waiting support for Descriptions and Subjects:

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place -Keys:GPSCoordinates=29.979167,31.134167 movie.mov