Adding and checking custom tags in files that are stored in Amazon S3

[kpg]

Hello,

I have this requirement where I need to add and check if files in S3 have the required custom tags without really downloading the file. Is that even possible?

Thanks,
kpg

[Hayo Baan]

No, how would exiftool get access to the data inside the file if you don't download it? The only way would be if you would be able to run the exiftool command on the Amazon servers but unless you are using their e.g. AWS services (and have your files stored on it) I doubt you have access to the Amazon server

[Phil Harvey]

I don't know what you mean by "really downloading".  You can do it without creating a local file by piping the download stream directly to ExifTool.  See the second last piping example here.

- Phil

[kpg]

The piping example is to extract the metadata. Is there a way I can add custom metadata on an S3 file?

[StarGeek]

You might want to look into options to mount S3 as a drive.  For example, I have Stablebit Cloud Drive, though I don't use it with S3. 

Though understand, you're still going to incur download costs.  I don't think there's a way to avoid that.