Retain daten when exporting Videos from Photos and Import to FCP X

Describe your workflow in detail. How did you export from Photos.app?? Just dragging and dropping might lose some metadata and even pixel data so it is best to use File > Export > original...

Movie metadata is a mess and a moving target. The date an app decides to grab can usually be in the following tags that might differ. Photos.app grabs them in this order (Keys, UserData, QuickTime, FileCreateDate). To muddy waters even more, some apps use different logic for .mp4, .m4v and .mov.

exiftool -a -G1 -s -fileOrder5 FileName -api LargeFileSupport=1 -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -FileCreateDate -Time:All movie.mp4
[Keys]          CreationDate                    : 2004:04:04 12:04:04+02:00
[UserData]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 2002:02:02 12:02:02+02:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:01:01 12:01:01+02:00

If you use the File>Export unmodified function that Matti described, the date created that appears in Photos will be retained and be available when imported into FCP.

I check this with Sony and DJI footage and it works correctly. Check the Adjust date/time. The problem may be camera specific.

In the Modify menu. It also shows correctly in Content Created in List view in the Browser.

That's very likely. You can't use iCloud Photo Library with FCP.

> When the content is offloaded to iCloud and downloaded for export, the creation dates are all over the place (time of export)

That is normal. File dates are very fragile.

Are you sure there are real internal metadata dates in those movies? Social media sites like WhatsApp, FB etc nuke internal metadata. Also re-encoding (ffmpeg by default) movies often zero metadata dates.

That looks like the Finder. Can you show what you see in FCP?

Content Created information is unfortunately not available by default in the Information inspector.

Switch the Browser to List view and in the list columns see what is shown for Content Created.

I did a quick test how FCP 10.6.8 grabs movie dates.

Here are almost all the possible date tags that are deliberately set different (file name does not matter):

exiftool -a -G1 -s -fileOrder5 FileName -api LargeFileSupport=1 -api QuickTimeUTC=1  -Keys:CreationDate -UserData:DateTimeOriginal -QuickTime:CreateDate -System:FileModifyDate -MacOS:FileCreateDate -XMP-exif:DateTimeOriginal .

======== ./movie_m4v.m4v
[Keys]          CreationDate                    : 2005:05:05 12:05:05+02:00
[UserData]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2004:04:04 12:04:04+02:00
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2002:02:02 12:02:02+02:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:01:01 12:01:01+02:00
[XMP-exif]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2000:01:01 12:00:00+02:00
======== ./movie_mov.mov
[Keys]          CreationDate                    : 2005:05:05 12:05:05+02:00
[UserData]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2004:04:04 12:04:04+02:00
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2002:02:02 12:02:02+02:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:01:01 12:01:01+02:00
[XMP-exif]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2000:01:01 12:00:00+02:00
======== ./movie_mp4.mp4
[Keys]          CreationDate                    : 2005:05:05 12:05:05+02:00
[UserData]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2004:04:04 12:04:04+02:00
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2002:02:02 12:02:02+02:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:01:01 12:01:01+02:00
[XMP-exif]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2000:01:01 12:00:00+02:00

FCP import dialog always shows MacOS:FileCreateDate (it is not an internal metadata date but that fragile system date that can very easily change when moving files around):

But on the other hand, FCP browser then shows Keys:CreationDate (the time is +1 hour incorrect because FCP seems to use computer timezone and also add DST to it):

If Keys:CreationDate is removed, then FCP grabs the date from QuickTime:CreateDate to .m4v and from MacOS:FileCreateDate to .mp4 and .mov:

Finally, if QuickTime:CreateDate is zeroed, FCP gets all those dates from MacOS:FileCreateDate:

exiftool -a -G1 -s -fileOrder5 FileName -api LargeFileSupport=1 -api QuickTimeUTC=0  -Keys:CreationDate -UserData:DateTimeOriginal -QuickTime:CreateDate -System:FileModifyDate -MacOS:FileCreateDate -XMP-exif:DateTimeOriginal .

======== ./movie_m4v.m4v
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2002:02:02 12:02:02+02:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:01:01 12:01:01+02:00
======== ./movie_mov.mov
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2002:02:02 12:02:02+02:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:01:01 12:01:01+02:00
======== ./movie_mp4.mp4
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2002:02:02 12:02:02+02:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:01:01 12:01:01+02:00

I usually do not pay attention to those dates because I have the date in the filename as 2006-0606-1206-06.mp4