Motorola Droid / Milestone strange USER COMMENT Exif Data

Started by BangkokPhoto, November 08, 2016, 08:39:56 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

BangkokPhoto

I noticed a strange value in Motorola Milestone JPEG User comment field. I did not add it, as far as I know Lightroom did not add it. I ran the text through google translate and found it does contain some location data. Before I mass delete this data wanted to see if this means anything to anyone:


믯⚿欦祥潷摲☦∠慐楲≳∠牆湡散"
User Comment                    : δ»»ΓÜ┐µ¼ªτÑѵ╜╖µæ▓ΓÿªΓêáµàɵÑ▓Γë│Γêáτëåµ╣íµòú"

Phil Harvey

ExifTool shows the same thing as LR if the proper character sets are used (see FAQ 18):

> exiftool 2010-06-29_10-16-29_812_Paris-2.jpg -usercomment
User Comment                    : 믯⚿欦祥潷摲☦∠慐楲≳∠牆湡散"


(and whether or not the above displays properly will depend on your web browser)

I don't know what this means.

I have another sample from a Motorola Milestone here with a similar (but not identical) UserComment:

User Comment                    : 믯⚿欦祥潷摲☦∠慌慶≬∠畑扥捥"

- 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 ($).

BangkokPhoto

I don't know what character set should be used. I didn't add this data, and it is NOT present across all my Milestone photos (but most of them have it).

There are slight differences. Could this possibly be coordinate data in the incorrect character set?
믯⚿欦祥潷摲☦∠慎䬠畬慥•吢慨汩湡≤
믯⚿欦祥潷摲☦∠慐楲≳∠牆湡散"

Phil Harvey

Ah.  Haha!  It's not chinese at all.  Motorola writes the wrong encoding -- it is ASCII or UTF8, not UNICODE (UCS-2) as indicated.  Your sample indicates "Paris" and "France".  Here is a snippit from the exiftool -v4 output:

  | | 15) UserComment = UNICODE...&&keyword&& "Paris" "France"
  | |     - Tag 0x9286 (264 bytes, undef[264]):
  | |         051c: 55 4e 49 43 4f 44 45 00 ef bb bf 26 26 6b 65 79 [UNICODE....&&key]
  | |         052c: 77 6f 72 64 26 26 20 22 50 61 72 69 73 22 20 22 [word&& "Paris" "]
  | |         053c: 46 72 61 6e 63 65 22 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [France".........]
  | |         054c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         055c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         056c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         057c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         058c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         059c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         05ac: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         05bc: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         05cc: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         05dc: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         05ec: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         05fc: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         060c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [................]
  | |         061c: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00                         [........]


- 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 ($).

BangkokPhoto

#4
I tried every online tool I could find for encoding conversion, I could only get france out of it.

I'm glad I didn't mass delete it. Do you think additional geolocation is hidden in there?

Looking at this again: paris and france are in the filename (put there by motorola)... so this data could be looking at the file name and not the location data... its a mystery to me. I have owned other motorola camera phones; only the milestone has usercomment.

Do you think motorola used mixed encoding in the usercomment field? ASCII for the Paris/France and UNICODE for a lat/lon/alt/direction field?

Phil Harvey

#5
No.  The encoding is ASCII or UTF8, but represented as UNICODE in the file.

Attached is a config file that will patch this Motorola error to read the UserComment properly:

exiftool -config fix_user_comment.config -usercomment FILE

- Phil

Edit: Improved config file to remove leading BOM from string
...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 ($).

BangkokPhoto

I ran it but it's messy:

User Comment                    : ∩╗┐&&keyword&& "Paris" "France"

Do you think there is anything in the "∩╗?

Phil Harvey

Right.  I should have removed the UTF-8 byte order mark (BOM) from the start of the string.  I have updated the config file in my previous post to fix this.

- 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 ($).

BangkokPhoto

I greatly appreciate your help. As far as I can see these weird characters are simply City and country. I have no idea why Motorola threw this data in the usercomment field.

The Milestone did not come with any type of image software. The City/country is in the filename and the GPS coordinates are in their own field...
The lack of OEM software and the repetitiveness is a headscratcher.

I'm too scared to delete the data thinking there is something more; I'm lacking altitude, direction, GPS Time... do you think any of that is in the USERCOMMENT FIELD?

Phil Harvey

Quote from: BangkokPhoto on November 08, 2016, 12:16:04 PM
I'm lacking altitude, direction, GPS Time... do you think any of that is in the USERCOMMENT FIELD?

No.  It is only the text string.

- 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 ($).