Change file properites?

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Change file properites?

Postby fierygod » Sun Feb 12, 2006 2:24 am

OK, I know this may be outside the strict bounds of a file remaining application but it is a “bulk file� type of thing. Plus I can’t find anything which says it does this, so I’m asking here. For something which seems so simple I can’t believe I have not found a solution, even for lots of dollars.

Situation:
Digital cameras make nice file names like DCSXXXXX.jpg or pictxxxx.jpg. Nice for the camera company, but not so convenient for me. So I’m bulk renaming a folder full of digital photos. I’d really like to store a few things in the file properties like subject & comments. I can right click on a tiff or jpg file and enter Title, Subject, Author, Keywords, and Comments. With these stored, I can have Windows Explorer display these columns.

I can find stuff all over that will store these properties for MS Office documents. Heck I can even find code which I could use to write a VB program to change properites in bulk. But all the methods I’ve found work only on Office docs, not on jpg’s. So here I sit manually updating hundreds of files one by one - right clicking on the file.

Yeah I know that I can probably get a desktop macro scripter to automate this, but then I have to create new scripts all the time, and I'm not so enthused by that either.

What I wish for:
The ability to bulk-load the properties of jpg & tiff images for windows explorer. As a default all I’d like to do is store the previous file name into the comments so that I don’t loose some previous connection if I've renamed the file before. I’d be happy changing the subject and comments.
fierygod
 
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Postby Admin » Sun Feb 12, 2006 10:02 am

Hi,

The reason for this is as follows.

Word documents contain a section in the file for storing "extra" information, such as Author, Comments, Version History etc.

JPEG files contain a similar section, called the EXIF tags, and it's these tags which get populated by digital cameras with stuff like flash mode, aperture, date taken etc.

When you are changing the Subject and Comments, are you doing this by right-clicking the file? If you then you need to be very careful. This information is only available if you are using the NTFS file system (which most computers are, and should). HOWEVER...if you then copy your files to a FAT file system, or to a CD-ROM, then you will lose all this information. This is because the information isn't held in the file itself, it's being stored in the NTFS file-system table.

Try it yourself. Copy one of your files to a FAT disc and you'll see a warning message telling you that certain information will be lost.

So, what you really need is a utility purely for editing EXIF tags. I've yet to find a suitable utility myself. Even Adobe Photoshop doesn't support this - you can view the tags but not change them. Cerious Software's Thumbs Plus is the same. I suspect part of the reason is that there's multiple standards (as always) for EXIF tags, and some cameras support more tags than others.

So to answer your question: No, BRU won't be able to support this. And please be very careful when using the "extra" file attributes, as you'll lose them when you copy your files to a different format disc.

Hope this helps!



Jim
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Postby spambait » Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:06 pm

What you want is ACDSee. I'm using ACDSee Pro v8. It does batch renaming and batch EXIF data editing. Don't bother using anything else for photos. BRU is a great utility, but you've got to use the right tool for the job. Incidentally, you may want to use ACDSee to import your photos for you, as it will rename them on the fly so you don't have to deal with those funny camera filenames in the first place.
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