Imported movie dates don't load properly in Photos

Question

Imported movie dates don't load properly in Photos

Related to my other question.

I'm importing old iMovie clips into Photos, but Photos creates a weird random date. I've compressed the movies (old iMovie clips) to HEVC using Handbrake and I can use Better File Attributes to change the file date using the clip name, and that loads it up and looks right.

But when I send people the movie it doesn't send the date (mail, message or airdrop). And the new movie loaded into someone else's Photos doesn't just have a random date, it's a date that can't be set in Photos. It lets me set the date but then doesn't actually change it from the random date.

Date example: 28 December 3279040

Does anyone know how I can 'clean' this movie in some way so that dates work in Photos? Before or after importing.

Posted on Aug 27, 2020 5:46 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Matti Haveri

Level 6

14,850 points

Aug 27, 2020 10:24 PM in response to Greg Alexander1

I use exiftool to set and correct the dates in movies (GraphicConverter has a similar feature but currently it does correctly handle DST differences). I set the date to the filename and copy it to metadata tags. That weird year "3279040" might be caused by a bug how Photos treats a missing timezone in some tags. For more info than you probably would ever want to know about the mess with movie dates check:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-250002750

Reply

Answer 2

Sep 1, 2020 10:34 PM in response to Matti Haveri

A correction and a re-correction: That should have read: GraphicConverter has a similar feature but currently it does NOT correctly handle DST differences.

But just a few days ago a new GC beta fixed the issue with QuickTime DST tags (previously they were -+1 hour off if the movie's DST differs from the computer's DST) so now also that works OK. I guess that fix will be in the main version in a few weeks.

http://www.lemkesoft.org/beta.html

Reply

Answer 3

Sep 3, 2020 11:51 PM in response to Matti Haveri

Wow that post you wrote you linked to Is very useful, though I don’t fully understand yet.

The differences in the latest OS and older might explain why when I airdrop a movie with a failed date from my updated phone to a year-old MacOS, the date “unbreaks”.

ok still not sure why sometimes the bad date shows 1970, and other times shows the broken future date.

when you say the Timezone matters, does that mean setting it within Photos should help? (It doesn’t seem to). I see the Timezone on the Mac does show my local Timezone, but I wonder if that Is just the default shown when there’s no Timezone, so still needs to be set.

now to try GC. :)

Reply

Answer 4

Sep 4, 2020 12:55 AM in response to Greg Alexander1

By a missing timezone I meant that if the "[Keys] CreationDate: 2020:01:01 12:00:00+02:00" metadata tag inside the movie for some reason does not have the timezone part "+02:00", then Photos.app 4.0 and 5.0 display some weird year like "3279040".

exiftool has a lot of options but for general use I'd recommend GraphicConverter. Use the latest GC 11.2.3 beta if you want the DST handled properly when setting movie metadata dates from the filename (use UTC). I'd recommend putting the date in the filename because it makes things easier.

Reply

Imported movie dates don't load properly in Photos

Similar questions