Viewing full timestamp in Metadata Panel

[joe]

Hello,

As I'm working to manage and standardize the data for my growing set of files, I've found an issue with timestamps I'd like to tackle. From the Metadata Panel, I click to view the full timestamps and notice that I have some of each of the below formats. I would like to show these "full" timestamp values in the Metadata panel (without clicking) for easier identification of these so I can standardize them. The inconvenience is when I select a set of files that I believe all have the same timestamp and IMatch shows understandably "(Multiple Values)" since the full timestamp representation is technically different although the actual time is the same. I could not find a way to show the full representation by default which would help me track these differences down. Using "raw value" in the tag options of a layout does not do the trick. Thanks.

1949:05:01 00:00:00-06:00
1949:05:01 00:00:00.000-06:00
1949:05:01T00:00:00.000-06:00

[Mario]

The Metadata Panel shows the "parsed" timestamp in your local time zone.
If you click on the value, IMatch shows the actual text in the metadata tag as delivered by ExifTool. Almost always in the ISO format used by ExifTool.

Timestamps are text and it seems you or the software/devices you have used have written different formats of timestamps. I have not seen this before, quite unusual for ExifTool to produce such a variety of formats. Since ExifTool declares these tags as datetime tags, the Metadata Panel parses them and displays them in your local date and time format if possible. The tags in question have nowraw value, they are text. Which is why your "use raw value" attempt fails.

When you select multiple files, IMatch compares the textual/numerical value in the tags included in the current MD Panel layout and indicates differences.
Since the tag value is actually different, it will show that way.
There is no "special case" to deal with date and time values representing the same time using different formats. Neither there are for numerical values, Booleans and whatnot. For performance reasons, the MD Panel compares the actual tag value for differences and does not perform any parsing or conversions. This would be too slow. And add to much complexity just in order to deal with such a rare case as yours.

The various formats used in your files are quite uncommon. I don't think I have ever seen this before. ExifTool usually does a great job at "unifying" such timestamps.
 
I recommend you normalize the various timestamp formats you have used to the standard YYYY:MM.DD hh:mm:ss format for optimized compatibility and comparison.

[PandDLong]

Sounds like an interesting challenge.

While the metadata panel isn't ideal for your situation for the reasons Mario outlined, there are a couple other ways you should be able to see and access the full timestamp with all of its variations.

A couple ideas that may be helpful:

1. Setup a filter using a Variable for each of your cases that need to be fixed. Using the substr function you would be able to isolate the situation and then you would know that all of the filtered files need a certain fix.

2. If you want to be able to browse visually and see the full timestamp - use a custom template in a file window layout.  You could use also a custom template to display selective text - like "Type 1" "Type 2", etc in the file window.


If you want to do some automated fixing, you could use a metadata template to update the timestamp to the correct format.   You could create one template to handle all known situations or to keep the template simpler, you could use different templates for different situations (combine it with the filter and it should be fast to fix everything).

I hope this is helpful.

Michael