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ExifToolGUI Unicode support

Started by afeininger, September 07, 2013, 05:03:27 AM

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afeininger


Hi,

does anybody know if the older versions support unicode characters in metadata?

I decided to go back to 4.27 again and at the moment I use Exiftool 9.01 with 4.27, which is faster and easier for me than GUI version 5.

But I would like to be sure that all tags that I write are coded in Unicode. There seems to be no switch, so how can I be sure the tags are allright?

Thank you!


Phil Harvey

I would think that unicode should work fine in the GUI version 4.  If it looks OK when displayed in the GUI then it is probably good.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).

afeininger

OK, I use german Umlaute (ä, ö, ü, ß) for tagging in german and they are displayed correctly. And the metadata that comes from other software (Irfanview) looks good, too.

But is there a way to find out if they are saved in Unicode? Perhaps it's only Exiftool(GUI), that is smart enough to display anything in the right way, and later I get problems like these:

http://www.alltageinesfotoproduzenten.de/2011/05/02/probleme-mit-sonderzeichen-in-iptc-feldern-beim-bildagentur-import/

Adobe CS5 seems to be very critical (but correct, on the other hand).

Can I see which kind of metadata I have in a file? Perhaps by viewing into the file with a text editor?



Phil Harvey

If you are writing XMP metadata, then they are stored in UTF-8.  The only real problems are with the old IPTC IIM metadata.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).

afeininger


And how are IPTC-IIM-fields stored in Exiftool(-GUI)? Also in UTF-8?
My workflow at the moment is filling in the IPTC-IIM fields (with Irfanview or with ExiftoolGUI) and then copying them to XMP via ExiftoolGUI 4.27 (5.15 can't do that)

Do I get UTF-8 metadata in all fields in this way?

Please understand my obtrusive questions, there are some commonly used special characters in german language and a text with wrong characters instead of the real ones looks ugly and sometimes is unreadable... :-\

Phil Harvey

For IPTC, be sure to set the CodedCharacterSet tag in the metadata to "UTF8".  If you do this, then the IPTC will be stored in UTF-8.  See FAQ 10 for more information.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).

afeininger


Hm, so I have to use the "-charset iptc=CHARSET" switch? But how can I do that in the GUI? Can I modify a ini file or something like that?


Phil Harvey

No.  Just be sure that you write CodedCharacterSet=UTF8

The value of the IPTC:CodedCharacterSet tag determines how the internal IPTC string values are interpreted. If CodedCharacterSet exists and has a value of "UTF8" (or "ESC % G") then string values are assumed to be stored as UTF‑8. Otherwise the internal IPTC encoding is assumed to be Windows Latin1 (cp1252), but this can be changed with "-charset iptc=CHARSET".

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).