Replacing camera model information with user-defined abbreviations

[Lenni2]

Hi there,

I want to use Exiftool for renaming some 100.000 pictures from different cameras (including smartphones). The camera model should be the first part of the new filenames (probably the first 4-6 characters, by all means a fixed length!), the timestamps should go afterwards.

Everything works, however, I'm not satisfied with the camera model information which is either too generic (${Make;} e.g. reveals "Canon") or too verbose (${Model;} e.g. reveals "Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III"), both unsuitable for to be included into a filename.

Is there a possibility to use user-defined "Model" strings as abbreviations with Exiftool alone, thus avoiding a time-consuming script loop with 100.000 calls of exiftool.exe? Perhaps some kind of a lookup table:

"Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III" -> "CANON1"
"Canon EOS 7D" -> "CANON2"
"Panasonic DMC-FZ38" -> "PANA38"

so the filenames would be

CANON1_20231103_193422_001.jpg
CANON2_20230926_132855_001.jpg
PANA38_20231104_141209_001.jpg

Thank you.

[Phil Harvey]

You can do this with a config file to translate the Model names any way you want.  For example with this "my.config" file:

Code Select Expand

%Image::ExifTool::UserDefined = (
    'Image::ExifTool::Composite' => {
        MyModel => {
            Require => 'Model',
            ValueConv => q{
                return 'CANON1' if $val =~ /^Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III/;
                return 'CANON2' if $val =~ /^Canon EOS 7D/;
                return 'PANA38' if $val =~ /^Panasonic DMC-FZ38/;
                return undef;
            },
        },
    },
);
1;  #end
(I am just testing the start of the string in case they have trailing spaces, which often happens)

Then the command would be:

exiftool -config my.config "-filename<${mymodel}_${createdate}_%.3nc.%e" -d "%Y%m%d_%H%M%S" DIR

- Phil

[Lenni2]

Hi Phil,

thank you for your fast reply - it works like a charm.

Would it also be possible to assign a special abbreviation if the image file's EXIF data doesn't contain a "Model" tag (or even no EXIF data at all)? I tried to replace the "undef" in your file with a string ('OTHER'), this works as long as a "Model" tag exists and I'm currently planning to use this approach for rarely used cameras for which I don't want to assign camera-specific prefixes. However, if no "Model" tag (or not EXIF data) exists, currently no renaming takes place.

Thanks again!

[Phil Harvey]

Sure.  All you have to do is Desire your tag Instead of Require-ing it, and add also Desire another tag that always exists.  For example:

Code Select Expand

%Image::ExifTool::UserDefined = (
    'Image::ExifTool::Composite' => {
        MyModel => {
            Desire => {
                0 => 'Model',
                1 => 'FileName',
            },
            ValueConv => q{
                return 'CANON1' if $val =~ /^Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III/;
                return 'CANON2' if $val =~ /^Canon EOS 7D/;
                return 'PANA38' if $val =~ /^Panasonic DMC-FZ38/;
                return 'OTHER';
            },
        },
    },
);
1;  #end
- Phil

[Lenni2]

Hm - this one only replaces the "unknown" 'Model' tag with "OTHER" but doesn't rename the file without any EXIF data (this one should get a different prefix such as "UNKNOWN").

(I used the same parameters with my call to exiftool.exe for this test.)

[Phil Harvey]

The file needs to contain CreateDate metadata for that command to work.  Use this command to rename any file (FileModifyDate always exists):

exiftool -config my.config "-filename<${mymodel}_${filemodifydate}_%.3nc.%e" "-filename<${mymodel}_${createdate}_%.3nc.%e" -d "%Y%m%d_%H%M%S" DIR

- Phil

But I didn't change OTHER to UNKNOWN as you wanted...  I'll leave that as an exercise for you.

[Lenni2]

Hi Phil,

the ${filemodifydate} did the trick here. Now it works as it should: Unknown cameras get an "OTHER" prefix while files without EXIF data get "UNKNOWN".

You really rock. Thank you very much for ExifTool and your help here, I really appreciate it. It's time for another donation!