incorrect date/time stamp of iphoto videos

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incorrect date/time stamp of iphoto videos

Hi,

I just setup an ATV3 that is connected via iTunes Home Sharing with my Mac Pro (3,1) that I've just upgraded to Mavericks and the latest version of iPhoto (v 9.5). I also have the latest version of iTunes. My ATV went thru a Firmware update before I even used it.

Over the past 3 days, I have imported non-compliant AVCHD video taken on my Sony HD camcorder into iMovie which saves them as .MOV. Using the Finder's batch "encode" function (from command+clicking on the selected files from the Finder), I have created AppleTV compliant versions (using the Finder's batch "encode" function). They are 720p versions and compatible with ATV. I've done this for about 4 memory cards' worth of AVCHD video (~64 GB).

I then import these videos into iPhoto and they show up with a date/time stamp equal to when I imported the videos, not the date the videos were taken.

So, I do a batch change in iPhoto to set the correct date/time. Everything sorts and shows the correct date in iPhoto.

When I view & play these files in ATV, they work fine, except the date is wrong. The date shows up as the date imported into iPhoto, not the date the video was taken. It seems like it's ignoring the iPhoto batch change and looking back to the source file's "modified" date (which I understand is not changed by the iPhoto batch change process)?

Here is what is strange. The videos from the first memory card that I imported are showing the ADJUSTED (= correct) date in ATV. It's only the succeeding videos that have the incorrect (= date imported into iPhoto) date/time stamp. I cannot figure out what changed and why the inconsistency in the date stamp being used by the ATV, because I didn't change anything in my process. I did exactly the same steps for ALL the videos (including the batch date/time change in iPhoto)!

Can somebody tell me - what "metadata" does ATV use to determine the date/time of an iPhoto video, and how can I adjust this so it shows correctly on the ATV? Everything in iPhoto is perfect. Is it possible something just needs to refresh or re-sync? Given that some of my videos (the ones I did first) are displaying with the correct date, I know it's possible to get ATV to display all of them correctly. I just need some tips on how to do it as nothing I do in iPhoto seems to fix it.

One other piece of info: You might wonder why I have these videos in iPhoto and not in iTunes. It's because I want all my home videos in one place. All our family iphones' video is already in iPhoto naturally, so it seems reasonable that I would want our camcorder footage there too, not in a separate place.

PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jun 12, 2014 11:56 AM

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Answer 1

JeremyfromIL Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 13, 2014 7:50 AM in response to JeremyfromIL

* bump *

will try to state my question more simply before assuming nobody knows the answer. I've seen it on this forum where somebody (Winston I think) said they used to know "where" Apple TV gets its time/date stamp from when viewing photos & videos from iPhoto.

Does anybody know for sure? I've got videos that SORT correctly in the timeline, implying it can read the time/date stamp from iPhoto created with the "Batch Change" process.

But the actual date that shows up when browsing the videos from within Events view, photos view, albums view, etc, is the wrong date & time. I'ts using the "import' date into iPhoto. It's only doing this for videos imported into iPhoto from a folder on my computer, not imported directly from a digital device (i.e. my iPhone photos & videos have the correct date and I'm not invoking the "Batch Change" function on those).

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Answer 2

JeremyfromIL Author

Level 1

0 points

Jun 16, 2014 10:02 AM in response to JeremyfromIL

Hoping this will help somebody in the future, if any of their videos are displaying with an incorrect date and they care to have it display correctly.

(Apparently I cannot mark my own question as "solved"? but I do consider this issue to be moot now).

My problematic "AVCHD videos imported into iPhoto manually" (not imported directly from a digital device) suddently started showing up with the correct date on my Apple TV. Yay.

As far as what fixed the issue? I still don't know how Apple TV gets the information or what specifically it looks for when displaying these details, but I didn't change anything and it sorted itself.

One of two things fixed it:

(1) Mere passage of time, enabling iPhoto to sync "batch changes" to iTunes which is what actually streams to Apple TV (note it literally took 3 days for this to happen if this is indeed what solved it);

OR

(2) I did import some additional photos & videos into my iPhoto library (directly from an iPhone) after my original posts above and before the problem fixed itself (i.e. on "day 3"). Although I didn't alter anything about the albums & events for the AVCHD videos that were displaying with an incorrect date, perhaps importing other photos "forced" the iPhoto library to refresh itself or re-send its metadata to iTunes which then properly streamed the videos to Apple TV with all the correct information.

FWIW -- when trying to fix this problem myself (unsuccessfully and thus why I posted my question on this forum), I did attempt the following:

(1) Shut Down & restarted my Mac & iTunes on that Mac -- didn't work

(2) Rebooted my Apple TV both before and after (1) above -- didn't work

(3) From the "Choose which photos to share" menu of iTunes, I unchecked the "share photos from iPhoto" and hit apply. I then quit iTunes and attempted steps (1) and (2), above. When I relaunched iTunes, I then re-enabled sharing of photos & videos from iPhoto inside of iTunes (hoping to force a re-sync). -- This also didn't work even when I rebooted the Apple TV again.

Thus, I still don't know what really fixed the problem, since my attempts to force a re-sync didn't work but maybe it just needed 3 days on its own?

Either way, I'm good to go now. I'll play around with some new AVCHD videos and see if the problem and/or solution replicates itself. I don't know, maybe I'm the only one who cares that the information is displayed correctly on Apple TV. I am a type-A, afterall, and don't like it when I proudly display photos & videos to the family with my new technology and people point out sloppy-looking things like a bad date.

Cheers

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Answer 3

LaiPod

Level 2

223 points

May 3, 2015 1:03 PM in response to JeremyfromIL

No sure if my problem is the same as yours because I don't use Apple TV.

I do see different timestamps on my iPhone5 videos. Photos and videos taken at the same time receive different timestamps. I imported the photos and videos from my iPhone 5 to my MacBook via "Image Capture". Once the files are on my MacBook, I inspect them using Google Picasa. Photos show the correct timestamps, but all the videos got a timestamp shifted by 14 hours. e.g. photos show 8am, videos show 10pm on the same day. I live in Pacific timezone which is UTC-7:00 in this season. So the 14 hours difference does not seem to a timezone error. It becomes very annoying when all my videos are sorted out of sync from my photos.

In my cases, there may be several possible failure points:

1. iPhone is stamping photos and videos inconsistently.

2. JPG and Video format stores the timestamp differently and various softwares read them differently.

3. Image Capture may be altering the timestamp during import.

4. Google Picasa reads the photo vs. video timestamp incorrectly.

I still don't know which causes the symptoms.

I'm curious why no one responded to your post for month. Perhaps no one else encounter the same problem except you and me.

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Answer 4

Jun 8, 2017 6:07 AM in response to LaiPod

LaiPod - Did you ever find a solution to this? I have the same problem. Yes, it is very annoying. There are manual/batch ways to alter the timestamp but this is not practical.

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