Hi Jeff,

The problem is that any software that rewrites the EXIF and changes the position of the maker note information must also change any absolute offsets inside the maker notes or else they will point to invalid data. (The maker notes frequently contain a TIFF IFD structure, and unfortunately the TIFF standard specifies that all offsets are absolute. There are, however, some smart manufacturers like FujiFilm who ignore this standard and use relative offsets instead, and these relative offsets are not invalidated when the maker note block changes location, but most others like Canon, Nikon, Pentax, etc use absolute offsets.)

This is a very common problem because the maker notes contain proprietary information and not many utilities are able to properly shift the offsets when editing the EXIF. The EXIF editor must at least understand the IFD structure of the maker notes in order to properly adjust the offsets when the information is moved.

- Phil

Hi Jeff,

You can send me a jpg if you want (phil at owl.phy.queensu.ca), but you can see for yourself what the problem is, just run this command on the jpg:

Then take a look at the output html file in a web browser. Anything red or pink is bad (double-referenced data), as are large chunks of orange (unreferenced data).

And to see what the "fixed" structure should be, you can add the '-F' option:

- Phil