Hello,
I am trying to move my old .mov videos that were stored in iMovie to Photos App, but have since learnt that most of these videos are no longer readable by mac or photos. I can export from imovie and convert to a readable format (one by one and there are so many of them) but they lose all their metadata so I then need to fix their dates, one by one. Is there a batch converter that also keeps original metadata?
Thank you
Hi, I just wanted to let you know, that searching around a bit more, I did find a 3rd party App that seems to convert and KEEP creation date. Its the only one that does it, after trying about 6. It is called CISdem video converter.
So the source movies are .dv (or .mov) with no other important metadata than the date in DV:DateTimeOriginal, right? If that is the case, you can (first do a test with copies in a folder):
Copy the date one-by-one (you have to modify the source and destination file names accordingly):
exiftool -m -overwrite_original -wm w -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -api LargeFileSupport=1 -tagsFromFile source.dv '-AllDates<DV:DateTimeOriginal' '-Track*Date<DV:DateTimeOriginal' '-Media*Date<DV:DateTimeOriginal' '-FileCreateDate<DV:DateTimeOriginal' '-FileModifyDate<DV:DateTimeOriginal' destination.mp4
Or, as a batch for all same name .dv same name .mp4 in the same folder (change .dv suffix in the command to .mov if that is your source. If both the source and destination are .mov, it is easiest to have them in different folders):
exiftool -m -overwrite_original -wm w -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -api LargeFileSupport=1 -tagsFromFile %-.0f.dv '-AllDates<DV:DateTimeOriginal' '-Track*Date<DV:DateTimeOriginal' '-Media*Date<DV:DateTimeOriginal' '-FileCreateDate<DV:DateTimeOriginal' '-FileModifyDate<DV:DateTimeOriginal' *.mp4
Then optionally rename the .mp4 movies via their metadata dates (filename looks like 2001-0101-1200-00.mp4 and will append _NUM if CreateDate is the same for multiple files):
exiftool -m -P -fileOrder5 FileName -api QuickTimeUTC=1 '-FileName<QuickTime:CreateDate' -d '%Y-%m%d-%H%M-%S%%+2nc.%%e' .
I am glad you got it working. If the source .mov (or .m4v or .mp4) has more tags than just date, you can copy them all with something like:
exiftool -m -overwrite_original -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -api LargeFileSupport=1 -tagsFromFile source.mov -All:All '-FileCreateDate<QuickTime:CreateDate' '-FileModifyDate<QuickTime:CreateDate' destination.mp4
I usually convert movies with ffmpeg via the Terminal because I have a proven workflow for that. Many 3rd party converters like Handbrake and Shutter Encoder also use ffmpeg behind the scenes.
ffmpeg versions 4-7 do not properly copy movie metadata tags so I do not even try to use its options for that, but use exiftool to copy metadata to the re-encoded movies from the originals. Only ffmpeg '-map_metadata 0' correctly copies QuickTime:CreateDate, though. But with ffmpeg '-movflags use_metadata_tags' other movie tags are incorrectly written so Apple's apps do not read them.
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/4209#comment:26
https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=15418.msg82847#msg82847
What kind of metadata do the originals have? exiftool can copy all kinds of metadata to the copies from the originals.
If the originals are plain DV/D8 movies, there is not much but the original date to copy:
exiftool -a -G1 -s -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -Time:All movie.dv
[DV] DateTimeOriginal : 2001:12:08 13:11:31
That's great. Thank you. Is there a command that I could use to update the metadata dates using this tool? I don't need to edit anything else.
That works! Thanks you so much for the help!
I had to replace DV:DateTimeOriginal with QuickTime:CreateDate , but other than that the command works. It's going to save me a lot of time.
Moving imovie video archive to photos app