Makernote errors are not uncommon if you have edited the image with another utility, and most are designated as minor so they can be ignored (downgraded to warnings) with the -m option.

- Phil

I have a related problem (or so I believe). I have a database in Thumbsplus that I want to migrate. I managed to put the Capture date from the database into an unused IPTC field (say CREDIT) as a string of the format "2008:01:29" or (for some images) "2008/01/29" for each image. This date is different from the DateTimeOriginal field, and that is my problem for Lightroom (where I am migrating to). I am trying to change all Date fields in the images to the date stored in IPTC:Credit by

exiftool -S -s -Credit a.jpg | tr '/' ':' | exiftool -d "%Y:%m:%d" -AllDates'<=-' a.jpg

Ideally, I'd like to shift the time by +1 hour, too, but I could not figure out how. This does work for a couple of images (say 30% out 10,000) but for the majority I get an error message about minor (?) MakerNotes errors and the image does not change. Sometimes it does not work at the first time, but if I keep trying it is done afterall. I tried to delete the MakerNotes before I apply the above, then it runs through cleanly. But this I really do not want as I'd like to preserve the Makernotes.

Can I jist use the -m option and trust that all will be well (for 10,000) images? Any help appreciated-

Thanxx, Mixx

Thanks Phil, there are some changes but I'll take the risk and jump.

I have now written a shell script and after much trouble (running a GNU shell script on Windows) got it working. I realized while doing this that I have two wishes if I may for exiftool.

I think a syntax exiftool -tag1=$tag2 a.jpg would be much more intuitive that exiftool -tag1<$tag2 (which is by the way difficult to find in the option description).

I think it would be terrific if exiftool had built string manipulation functions such as substitute and substring. With those, one could work without shell or perl scripts and with just one command.

Thanxx, Mixx

Phil,

I am not an expert but suggestion 1 is just another problem of how to pass arguments to an application and could be solved by quoting rules maybe -tag1="$tag2" would do the value and -tag1="'$tag2'" the string. I do not know if this works, but would not be anything unusual.

About string manipulation: exiftool gets a string as an argument anyway as in

(using the "new" syntax :-)). What's wrong with

to assign the first 10 characters of the DateTimeOriginal flag to example_date? And if that should use a different notation one could

to get e.g. "2008/01/31" into example_date.

Just a thought, Mixx

Yup, I see the problem. Back to shell scripts then. -- Thanxx, Mixx