Struggling to build a shortcut for media files management

If this is going to incrementally evolve into your own photo and video management database, seriously consider reviewing and starting out using one of the available photo and video databases.

Or if you prefer to learn more about image and video metadata including about Exif metadata, I’d consider using better tooling than Shortcuts.

One tool for a more complete photography database would be Filemaker Pro, and that seems to have support for Exif and other metadata available. Probably need another tool to set the Exif data, as I don’t see a matching set function. But Filemaker Pro deals with a whole lot of the rest of a photo-management application.

If you were to use a shell script such as zsh shell built into macOS as the foundation for your photo management platform and tooling, get exiftools, and load the metadata you want into the image, if it isn’t already loaded into the image or video by the camera. The exiftools package can read and write many formats, including the metadata from MP4 video files.

To test the file contents, use the file magic tool available at the command line. man file The built-in file tool works reasonably for this case. (If you should evolve this and be accepting files from untrusted sources, I’d likely switch to the OpenBSD file magic tool, as that’s more robust against shenanigans.)

Filenames are probably best kept as UUIDs / GUIDs or other such “generated” unique names to avoid the seemingly inevitable naming collisions when some sequence number or another get restarted, or some second or third or forth device produces conflicting names, as tends to happen with apps and cameras and apps that use sequence numbers.

I’ve previously posted a zsh bulk file rename tool here: short cut date as file name - Apple Community

Various folks that have previously traveled this path can be found searching for exiftool references around here and else-network, too. It’s a tool that’s widely used for these tasks.

Might want to ask Apple to improve this area, both renaming, and for enhancing Shortcuts with direct Exif metadata and related access. (Right now, it’s probably easier to use the command shell directly, or to use Shortcuts to access the shell and exiftools or such.)

Two previous threads you’ll want to skim:

How to remove metadata in a an .mp4 file … - Apple Community (exiftools examples)

Using script: rename a file with "text_MM… - Apple Community (Swift code, and Automator calling exiftools)

I would use zsh here, not Shortcuts.

Shortcuts is useful for simple automation and app scripting stuff, and I have a bunch of that around, but I usually seem to hit some wall or another when using it for more complex app development. Exif metadata access is one such area, workarounds aside.

On Mac particularly, better and more flexible tools are built in, and other tools are readily available. zsh, Swift (particularly when used with Playgrounds for development), Python, etc.

And if I need a UI from a zsh or older bash shell script, a call to osascript works.

The future for Automator and AppleScript/JavaScript is unclear. Shortcuts has been getting most of the coverage at Apple. Automator hasn’t seen much Apple coverage since the JavaScript announcement. (And I do hope all of these continue to receive updates and enhancements, but recent Apple focus has been on Shortcuts, and particularly Swift, and replacing bash with zsh.)

PS1: Storing and usint UTC time works (way) better than local time (you’ll learn why, if you don’t).

PS2: Using YYYYMMDD works (sorts) (way) better than other formats, if you do use that as the filename.

PS3: If you’re going to have lots of photos and videos, don’t stuff them all un one ginormous directory. That gets slow, slower, glacial.

PS4: User VikingOSX had a fairly discussion with somebody here over the past month or so here in this community, about using Shortcuts for similar tasks.