How do check the integrity of Metadata?

[email@m-moser.de]

Hi Phil,

sorry about this, but I ran into my next problem with metadata info.

I found many TIFF files with corrupt IPTC Information.

Code Select Expand


>exiftool -P -a -G -"Keywords<Subject"  FD_04298.tif
Warning: [Minor] IPTC doesn't conform to spec: Records out of sequence - FD_04298.tif
Error: Error writing IFD0:IPTC-NAA - FD_04298.tif
    0 image files updated
    1 files weren't updated due to Errors


So my question: 
Do you have a tool to check the integrity of all metadata info?
Or can ExifTool do this?

Thanks,
Manfred

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Manfred,

ExifTool isn't designed as a validity tool, although it does report some of the more significant problems it finds.

I think JHOVE may do this, but I doubt that it is usable by the average person.

- Phil

[email@m-moser.de]

Hi Phil,

I did some testing with JHOVE, but it is too complicate and does not find all problems.

I checked images straight out of the camera: ->  JHOVE status: "Well-Formed and valid"
JHOVE returns this status even for my damaged files with the defect MPF segment.
JHOVE never returns the status "consistent" for my images.
In addition JHOVE does not support Nikon RAW files (NEF).

So I will ask you to add an integrity (or validation) check into ExifTool
(e.g. an additional parameter "-check").
Just to check the formal structure of the Metadata (not the content) and the validation of pointers and buffers.

This will help a lot to find errors in Metadata of image files

... and I hope it is not so much work for you, because ExifTool does already many checks during the read and write of tags.

Many thanks in advance,
Manfred

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Manfred,

This is not something that I will be adding to ExifTool.  It needs to be a separate utility.  It would slow down ExifTool too much if I tried to validate everything.

- Phil