Unwritten metadata doesn't clear with Writeback

[joe]

Hi. I had started using IMATCH with several hundred files and always seemed to have 100-200 files that needed "writeback" - even after doing many requests to write all pending files. So I cleared everything and started with a few files. The same behavior is happening with just a couple. Attached is the screenshot of the fields that always remain as "need to be written." Am I doing something wrong? Is there a list somewhere of what needs to be written so I can use exiftool to check if it was in fact written? Thank you.

[Mario]

Hi, Joe
welcome to the community.

Results like this are often caused by a mismatch between existing metadata in the image. Since it seems that time stamps are the problem, it's probably something caused by time stamps not matching in EXIF, legacy IPTC, XMP embedded in the particular image.

I have recently again enhanced the capabilities of IMatch to seamlessly migrate date and time information, including time zone information, between all the metadata formats which use time stamps in various forms, with or without time zone information. This is all very complex these days.

I would need to have an image which exhibits this behavior.
Please upload one to your cloud space and post a link or send to support email address with a link back to this topic.

Note: My "My metadata is not working right, please analyze and tell me what to do" email queue is always quite full, so expect a couple of days for me to look into this. Currently I have 11 tasks in that group alone.

[joe]

Thank you kindly, Mario. I have sent an email to Support.

[Mario]

I have analyzed the file. The metadata was (presumably) product by paint.net 5.0.9.

Looking at the file, I see that it contains EXIF, legacy IPTC and XMP metadata, in various states of mess.
Here is the relevant date and time data in the file:

Code Select Expand

[ExifIFD]      Date/Time Original             : 1964:01:01 00:00:00
[ExifIFD]      Create Date                    : 1964:01:01 00:00:00
[XMP-exif]      Date/Time Original            : 1964:01:01
[XMP-photoshop] Date Created                  : 1964:01:01
[XMP-xmp]      Create Date                    : 1964:01:01 00:00:00-04:00
[IPTC]          Date Created                  : 1964:01:01
[IPTC]          Digital Creation Date         : 1964:01:01
[IPTC]          Digital Creation Time         : 00:00:00-04:00
[IPTC]          Time Created                  : 00:00:00-04:00

[ExifIFD]      Offset Time                    : -04:00
[ExifIFD]      Offset Time Digitized          : -04:00
The problem is the XMP metadata, namely:

[XMP-exif]      Date/Time Original
[XMP-photoshop] Date Created

which are both invalid since they contain only a date but no time. And no time-zone offset, which should have been taken over from the EXIF offsets (-04:00) shown.

Since IMatch gives priority to embedded XMP metadata, it imports the XMP time stamps 'as-is'.
And when you write-back, IMatch sends the time stamps 'as read' to ExifTool, which reports

Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal (PrintConvInv)

and does not update the time stamps.

I think I have never seen XMP time stamps without a time value. Especially not when there is legacy IPTC data and EXIF data in the file with perfectly valid date, time and time zone information.

I fixed the problem by copying the value of the Create Date tag to the Date Subject Created tag in the Metadata Panel. This adds the missing time information.

When I now write back, IMatch/ExifTool produce the correct time stamps and synchronize them across EXIF, legacy IPTC and XMP as it should be. The file now contains:

Code Select Expand

[ExifIFD]       Date/Time Original              : 1964:01:01 00:00:00
[ExifIFD]       Create Date                     : 1964:01:01 00:00:00
[XMP-exif]      Date/Time Original              : 1964:01:01 00:00:00-04:00
[XMP-photoshop] Date Created                    : 1964:01:01 00:00:00-04:00
[XMP-xmp]       Create Date                     : 1964:01:01 00:00:00-04:00
[IPTC]          Date Created                    : 1964:01:01
[IPTC]          Digital Creation Date           : 1964:01:01
[IPTC]          Digital Creation Time           : 00:00:00-04:00
[IPTC]          Time Created                    : 00:00:00-04:00

[ExifIFD]       Offset Time                     : -04:00
[ExifIFD]       Offset Time Digitized           : -04:00

Use the TimeWiz app to fix the problem for all affected files

You can automate the repair process by selecting all affected files in a File Window and then running the Time Wiz app from the Tools menu.

Configure it as shown here:



Use this variable (copy and paste from here):

Code Select Expand

{File.MD.XMP::xmp\CreateDate\CreateDate\0|format:YYYY:MM:DD hh:mm:ss.tzo}
When you write back the files afterwards, the metadata mess is fixed.

Notes

Try with some sample files first.

This procedure assumes that the create date and date subject created in the files is/should be the same.

I shall also look into this peculiar case and see if I can somehow handle this error better when IMatch imports the metadata emitted by IMatch, e.g. adding a 00:00:00 time value and time offset if the XMP data in the file has only a date portion.

[joe]

Thank you!! It all works, and I'm back in business.