Recursing photo files in subdirectories to add metadata to all?

[Beholder3]

Hi,

is there any way to select multiple files which lie in subdirectories?

I am currently adding camera and lens infos to old (scanned) pictures from analogue film times. These are located in quite a few directories but they all are under the same dir tree.

Is there and way to do this by just adding this metadata once and not having to repeat the same thing over and over again for multiple directories? 

If that is currently impossible in GUI I would suggest this as a future feature.

[BogdanH]

Hi,

Files in subdirectories can't be selected in GUI and such possibility isn't planned right now -however, you can do that inside GUI by using ExifTool direct button.
An example perhaps (to start easier):
On drive D:, there's directory Photos, which contain folder Scanned. Now, inside Scanned, there are many subfolders containing files, which you would like to modify. Let's say, on all files, you would like to set Make="Canon" and Model="F-1".
1. Click on ExifTool direct button and make sure no file is selected (see status bar text below Command line)
2. write into Command line:-r -Make="Canon" -Model="F-1" "d:\Photos\Scanned"
3. press Enter key.
-that's it. I recommend you to tryout on smaller ammount of files first.

I hope this was of some help.

Bogdan

[Beholder3]

Thanks Bogdan! That -r option does the trick.

I have three observations now:
1. in some situations when using ExifToolGui and the direct button, a command string with the "-r" option doesn't execute with an error "no files selected" even though I did mark a directory. I have the impression this most often happens if the selected dir only contains one subdir and this only 1-3 files. The command executes all right when I select the files directly not via directory.

2. The length of the allowed input in the GUI window bottom for direct commands is too limited for some of my uses. I had to change a number of tags with relatively long text and it cuts off. Is there any way around this? Now I either run two commands via GUI or do the full thing on command line without exiftool gui. Both seems unnecessary.

3. I had a handful of cases where GUI and underlying exiftool got fully stuck (I had to kill the processes via task manager) when recursing subdirectories and a high number of files caused exiftool to report "(minor) warning maker notes could not be parsed".
Exiftool on command line executed all right on the same data.
I also could achieve a result when going piecewise thorugh the files, always only selecting 50-60 files together as a max. 110 did not work, so I assume the limit is somewhere around 70-80. Seems to me like GUI suffocates on the volume of warning messages from exiftool there.

[BogdanH]

Hi,

Ad 1:
No, when working with -r option, it doesn't matter if you select a directory or not and it also doesn't matter in what directory you're currently in: because you specify directory in command line. And when doing this, it is important, that no file is selected! -in this case message "No file selected -specify file in command line!" is shown in status bar.
Of course, the easiest way to deselect all files is by selecting any directory -but as said, selected directory means nothing to command line.
Ad 2:
Command line length... yes, I'm aware that it can be too short. When designed, it was ment for (basic) operations, which aren't covered by GUI. Moreover: it was ment to encourage beginners to try using ExifTool commands (and see result at once). As soon being limited with length, or some other options, which again can't be done by using ExifTool direct (i.e. redirecting output to file, etc.), I can only advice using ExifTool outside GUI -I believe you're so far.
Ad 3:
In theory, there's no reason why GUI would stuck (I've tried -r option on about 500 files without trouble), but... for me, it's hard to predict i.e. what will happen if 450 of 500 files have corrupted metadata, or many other possibilities.
Yes, there is quite possible, that in some cases GUI handles error messages (or whatever) wrong... and if/when I notice that, then I try to correct that, of course.

Bogdan