Getting Panasonic Maker Notes for photo location into metadata

[JeffK]

Sorry I need to ask dumb questions but it's nearly nearly a year since I did this operation and I have seriously forgotten what I did.

I want to create a metadata panel containing the location of photos derived from the Maker Notes  put into my photos by my Panasonic DMC-TZ60 camera.  Is there a tag eg for the makernote location "City"? because even though I'm pretty sure I've created such a tag and used it to get the data into iMatch I've forgotten how I went about it.

Any help is appreciated,

Jeff

[Mario]

You can do that by creating your own metadata panel layout. Just add the tags you want to see.

First things to check:

The standard way to record location information are the EXIF GPS data record or the XMP GPS and location records. Most cameras with built-in GPS devices write the coordinates into the standard EXIF GPS record. IMatch displays this data in the 'Default' metadata panel. You should not have do to anything special.

If your camera insists on burying location data somewhere in proprietary maker notes, you have a problem.

Switch the metadata panel into the 'Browser' layout.
Are the tags you are looking for visible? If this is the case, you can create your own panel layout right away.
The IMatch help explains this in detail. Just lookup "metadata panel layout" in the help index.

If the tags are not visible, you need to enable them in the Tag Manager (Edit > Preferences > Metadata 2: Tag Manager) because IMatch by default does not import all maker notes from all camera vendors. In most cases this data is useless for humans and only clogs up the database with millions of data items which are never needed.

After enabling the tags you want to import, select your files and press Shift+Ctrl+F5. Use the Reload Metadata command. If you have unwritten metadata for these files in the database, perform a write-back first.

Can you send me a sample image so I can look at the metadata the camera stores?
If it is really using a proprietary schema, it would be much better to use a Metadata Template to copy the data into the standard EXIF GPS tags. This way it would be usable with all applications (including IMatch) and also much better suited for long-term archival.

[JeffK]

Thanks Mario for your quick reply (do you ever get any sleep?; you are so consistently fast with your response).

I managed to find my previous work on another computer.  As an example I found a tag from the Panasonic Makernote for the city in which the photo was taken.  {File.MD.Panasonic::Main\109\City\0} - this tag works but I can't remember where I got it from.

I understand most of what you said above.  I have another question about how to search for such a tag but I'll do some digging first.

Thanks,

Jeff

[JeffK]

I think I may have gotten it from here or somewhere similar...

{File.MD.Panasonic::Main\109\City\0}

[JeffK]

I think the issue I experienced today was that I could find these Panasonic Makernote tags in the Tag Manager and was able to include them in the tags read in the database but I can't find them in the Tag Selector - I will look again.

[Mario]

So Panasonic really does the stupid thing and instead of using the standardized EXIF GPS and location tags in EXIF and XMP, they bury this information into their proprietary and non-documented maker notes? And users let them get away with that? This is really stupid and dangerous.

[JeffK]

Yes I think that is probably right.  While I managed to develop a workaround it does appear to be the case that Panasonic have put their location data into Panasonic specific fields rather than standardised ones.  This is probably why other photo management software also can not deal with Panasonic's location maker notes either.

Thanks very much, I appreciate your help.  Sometimes one only needs a single clue to make considerable progress.

Jeff

[Mario]

This is real stupid and it also locks you into Panasonic software. Why let users get Panasonic get away with that? This will boil up in a few years or when Panasonic decides to drop this proprietary schema for something else - we have seen this in the past with the other camera vendors.

What a stupid idea. GPS is standardized for a long time and well supported across the board. You cannot even see your files in the Map Panel in IMatch if all you have is GPS in proprietary maker notes, and you are missing many GPS-related features which are all based on the official standard GPS coordinates and location data...


Please send me a sample image or let me know where I can download one with the proprietary GPS data. I would have a look. You can send it to my support email (see link below).

[JeffK]

Yes Mario, I understand what you are saying.

As far as I know the images produced by my Pansonic (DMC-TZ60 (but it has a different model number in the US, I am in Australia) stores numeric GPS data (latitude, longitude, elevation etc) in the normal, standardised image fields.

However the camera can, at the time of taking the photo, using an internal map database, translate the latitude and longitude to a placename (typically Country, Region, City, Landmark or Location) which it then stores in proprietary fields rather than the relevant IPTC fields.  It is this data that I have been trying to retrieve.  Indeed the reason I want to retrieve it is to put it into suitable standardised image fields so that I can manage it using normally available DAM software such as iMatch or eg ACDSee Pro.  While iMatch afaik maintains the integrity of this proprietary data during image processing, ACDSee and most other similar software doesn't.

You make a good point that I should challenge Panasonic regarding this functionality rather than hassle DAM software designers with the probably unreasonable expectation that they (you) can fix it.  However the fact that I can process this data using iMatch was a significant reason why I bought it (I also quite enjoy "fiddling" with such comprehensive software as yours is.  I am not a professional or even keen amateur photographer.)

I note that the next similar model that Panasonic released the DMC-TZ70 has removed this internal mapping functionality so I suspect it hasn't been a strong selling point for them.  And of course one can create location placename data using the Geonames functionality in iMatch and other software.

I will send you a typical image from my camera with placename data attached as you ask.

Thanks again for all your help.  I appreciate the quality of your product and the support you provide.

Regards, Jeff

[Mario]

Sounds like you can easily handle this with a Metadata Template in IMatch 5 then. Using a template allows you to copy the data from the maker notes into the proper XMP (!) location tags. IMatch then takes care that these are mapped to legacy IPTC on write-back if you want.

Since Metadata Panels allow you to specify the data source using variables you have full access to all metadata, and you can even re-format the source data before storing it in another tag. Metadata Templates can also be used to create Favorites so you can run them with a single mouse-click or a keyboard shortcut, or even during import, which would automatically map your location tags when you add new files to your database.

[Mario]

Thanks for the sample file.

The GPS EXIF data is filled, which is good.
After enabling the proprietary maker notes in the IMatch Tag Manager I can see the location data Panasonic stores in your files. There is a country, state, city, landmark etc. All this could have been stored in XMP or the EXIF GPS record, but Panasonic did decide not to do this...And there are even two "Baby Age" fields, for whatever purpose 

I think it would be the best way to copy this data in to the proper XMP GPS tags using a Metadata Template.
For a quick test I mapped

{File.MD.Panasonic::Main\109\City\0} to the standard tag 'City'
{File.MD.Panasonic::Main\105\Country\0} to the standard tag 'Country'
{File.MD.Panasonic::Main\111\Landmark\0|default:{File.MD.Panasonic::Main\103\Location\0}} to the standard tag 'Location'.

For location I used Landmark with a fallback to Location. In your file, only Landmark is filled, but maybe Location is filled for other files. There are also two City tags so you may have to use the same pattern there.

I could not find an ISO country code so this data has to come from somewhere else.

Once the template is run, the XMP location data is filled and will be usable in IMatch. On writer-back, IMatch synchronizes the data also into EXIF, making your files 'compatible' with all other software out there.


PS.: The Reverse geo-coding in IMatch produces the same data from the GPS coordinates, so unless Panasonic knows more than Google or GeoNames.org, you can just use this and ignore the Panasonic data entirely.