Can IMatch Handle Crazy Time Zone Offset Values?

[moviemaker445]

Hi Mario,
Earlier this year when I purchased IMatch 2021, I progressively added my media collection of approx 100k image and video files to an IMatch database.

My media collection goes way back to the 1990's and has been managed by many DAMs over the years in PCs and Macs.
Some of these apps have done horrible things to the metadata but IMatch has proved invaluable to fixing these issues when I discover them.

During the transition to IMatch, I became aware of many files that had issues with their Timestamps but since transitioning to IMatch I have used the TimeWiz to fix any issues I have detected.

Before I upgrade to IMatch2023, I would like to ask your advice regarding the Time Zone value in my files.

Firstly, I have no need for the 'Time Zone Offset' value as I am confident that the "File.DateTime" value in my files correctly displays the local time where the media was acquired. I know which country the media was recorded in, so I ignore the time zone offset because it can be wildly inaccurate as a result of being screwed up by past DAMs.
For example, I recently discovered some images that had a crazy time zone offset value of '-34' !!!

Before I install IMatch 2023, would you think it advisable to use the TimeWiz on all my files and set the time zone offset to '+0.00' to avoid the possibility that weird time zone offsets in some of my media could cause issues with the new way IMatch 2023 manages time?

Cheers :-)

[Mario]

I have explained it all in How IMatch uses Date and Time Information.
This page also explained how and which time zone offset IMatch applies to files which have none.
A time stamp without a time zone offset is considered incomplete, since it could be anything.
Check out the modes section on that page and the 7 options you can choose from.

If you set the time zone offset of all your files to +00:00 you declare that these time stamps are all in UTC. I'm not sure if this is the right decision, unless all your time stamps are indeed in UTC.

If this is a concern, I would setup a data-driven category based on the EXIF time zone offset tags to group files based on the different offsets in your database. This will reveal all files with invalid or wrong time zone offsets and you can fix them properly.