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[robydago]

Is the tag() function supposed to work with EXIF?

http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Center_expression_language#Tag


I tried with the following EXIF tags but I get nothing in MC:

Tag(EXIF: DateTimeOriginal)
Tag(EXIF: Maker)
Tag(EXIF: Software)
Tag(EXIF: FNumber)

What am I doing wrong?
(Note: I used ExifTool to get the names of the EXIF tags and check that they were populated in the photos I tested)

[blgentry]

The documentation says that the spelling and CASE of the tag must match exactly.  The EXIF example they show has exif spelled lowercase.  Your examples are all uppercase.  I don't know if it will make a difference or not, but it seems worth a shot.

Brian.

[robydago]

Thanks, but the case must match for the tag themselves not the exif keyword.

For example, the following both work:
Tag(EXIF: Date)
Tag(exif: Date)

But this won't work:
Tag(exif: date)

[robydago]

By the way,

using ExifTool I can't find an exif tag called just "Date".
There are "CreateDate", "DateTimeOriginal" and "ModifyDate", so what is MC retrieving and why is "Tag(exif: Date)" working if the tag names must match exactly?

[robydago]

*bump*

Has anyone successfully used tag() to get any exif values?

[marko]

Yes... Date. That is the only one that ever worked for me.

I also struggled with other tag blocks, mainly XMP, with a zero strike rate there too.

I don't fully understand how EXIF works, but like you, I looked for the the EXIF names in various places and found that MC, AcdSee and XnView all displayed the labels for some exif data slightly differently, leading me to believe that the actual tag labels in the file were not user friendly and were mapped somehow by the various different software options, translating them into their own definition of tag label.

A simple one like "Lens" simply refused to populate using Tag(), and I tried all case variations. I decided that I would never know how lens was labelled in the EXIF block and gave up on it. MC now populates the Lens info on import and I've never tried using Tag() since then, and 'then' was many years ago.

Is there a specific value you're after, or is it just general curiosity/frustration with tag() that you want to put to bed?

[robydago]

Is there a specific value you're after, or is it just general curiosity/frustration with tag() that you want to put to bed?

I need the "Software" tag now, but I could need more tags in the near future.

To check the tag names I use ExifTool as it seems to be "low level" and thus to use the "real" tags names (I hope...):
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/EXIF.html

Trying the following in MC:

Tag(EXIF: Date)
Tag(EXIF: ISO)
Tag(EXIF: Make)
Tag(EXIF: Model)
Tag(EXIF: Software)


Only "Date" and "ISO" returns something.
And "Make" and "Model" are imported automatically by MC, combined in the "Camera" field, so i really don't get it.

Can anyone from jriver please explain where to get the exif tag names MC is able to import  via the "Tag(exif: [TagName])" function?

[robydago]

bump

Can JR please tell where to find a reference table with the exact exif tag names the MC tag() function is "compatible" with?

[JimH]

Did you try searching for the standard on the Internet?

[robydago]

Jim,
as I don't know which one is the official source I've compared some of the google results:

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/EXIF.html
http://www.exiv2.org/tags.html
http://www.vcode.no/web/resource.nsf/ii2lnug/642.htm

Just to test a few tags, in all the the above links the following EXIF tag names and the Hex\Dec codes match (I'm using the Hex\Dec codes just to be sure they are actually referring to the same tags):

"Software"  (Hex: 0x0131 - Dec: 305)
"Make"      (Hex: 0x010f - Dec:271)
"Model"     (Hex: 0x0110 - Dec: 272)

None works in MC.

[Matt]

It looks to me like this is a list of the available EXIF tags:
Year
Camera
Rotation
Aperture
ISO
Shutter Speed
Focal Length
Flash
Latitude
Longitude
Altitude
Direction
Lens

Good luck!

[robydago]

Matt,

from your list it seems that the tag() function is limited to exif tags that are imported in MC standard fields, so.... I'm back to square one: how to get exif tag values from file tags MC is not already importing?

[ferday]

There is some software like this one that will export all the data to a csv or xml which could then be put into MC

http://www.matirsoft.com/main/folder_viewer.htm

I've downloaded this program in particular when I read about it but never actually used it.  There are other exif extractors out there I'm sure

[robydago]

@ferday

Since a a couple of days I am using ImBatch for batch processing images:

http://www.highmotionsoftware.com/products/imbatch

It has a GUI to "write" scripts and it can read\write tags, so I've just created one script that parse my image directory and on each file it appends the exif tags I need to the existing "<[IPTC] Keywords>".

When I then run auto-import in MC, the IPTC keywords are imported as MC keywords.

Success! 

But I still have to fullly test if this workflow is reliable.