Export Videos - Date and Time as Filename or Creation Date

Question

Export Videos - Date and Time as Filename or Creation Date

I have recently moved a lot of content to Photos as it allows me to sync my photos between my devices and with the new optimisation, it gives me access to my whole photo archive on my phone (really a nice feature).

I have some frustrations that I cannot create and share a gallery with my wife (we each have to keep our own sets of photos as there is no way I can find to share a gallery unless we use the same account which screws up newly taken photos).

The BIGGER frustration now is that we cannot even transfer large numbers of files to each other manually. For photos it is ok as there is EXIF but for videos it is a DISASTER !!!!! Apple manages to mess up the creation date of the files once they enter Photos so that when they are exported, they lose the original creation date.

I have over 3000 videos of my kids which I have collected over the years and now when they are exported, they all have the same creation date (luckily I was NOT using photos in the past so have captured the creation date in the file names). However for new videos, I cannot find a solution (which is infuriating).

A simple fix for photos would be either of the following:-

1. When exporting videos, allow you to set the date of the video as the file name (example YYYY-MM-DD HH-SS). Then people can use third party software to bulk change the creation date based on this format (at least there are some PC solutions although I would love to find a Mac solution).

2. When exporting videos, allow you to set the creation date of the file to the video date in Photos. This would mean any other Photos account when importing the video would be able to properly date the file.

I have seem some scripts online which worked with the older iPhotos, but I have not seen anyway to do this with the newer Photos. If anyone has a solution it would be greatly appreciated. Alternatively, if Apple could fix this simple file naming function when exporting photos that too would be a great solution.

Bob

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.6)

Posted on Oct 22, 2018 6:20 PM

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Answer 1

léonie

Level 10

200,651 points

Oct 23, 2018 5:00 PM in response to bobfromsingapore

It is a lot of work to save the creation date, when exporting the videos.

As a work-around: When you export an item from Photos, you can use the title of the item as the filename. So change the title of the video to the capture time.

Here are two scripts that can help with this:

I am usually using a slightly different approach. For each video I have a separate image as a key frame, and this key frame carries the title, the date and time, and the location tags.

When I reimport the video and the key frame, I lift and stamp the metadata from the key frame image to the corresponding videos: Script: Lift and Stamp all Metadata from one Photo to Other Photos

This working well, when I have to reimport a video after using iMovie to stabilize it and to adjust the colors.

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Answer 2

Oct 27, 2018 6:36 PM in response to bobfromsingapore

Sorry to be spamming my own thread. But some more searching after my last post found the following:-

https://www.videohelp.com/software/Change-Date-Time-Batch

Windows program which allows you to change the Media Created Date from the Creation/Modified Date !!! Success.

Very convoluted route to getting my videos into Photos, but at least it has been solved.

Bob

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Answer 3

Oct 23, 2018 5:08 PM in response to léonie

Firstly, this solved a major bugbear which I had which was not showing enough information about the photo in the thumbnail page. Thanks so much for solving that part too.

In terms of the export with the title as the name, that works. Will now try to change the creation date with advanced renamer per the following instructions. https://www.advancedrenamer.com/user_guide/method_timestamp

If anyone knows a Mac program that can do this it would be greatly appreciated

If there is not Mac equivalent then I will have to put everything on a hard drive and move over to a PC just to do the creation date changes. Anyway that is a small issue compared to trying to manually change the dates of thousands of videos in the photo app.

Really hope apple can fix icloud photos to allow the creation date to remain. The whole point of Photos for Mac is that it is meant to be non destructive manager in terms of the media in the library. Changing something as important as the creation date is pretty destructive in my books as it prevents users from properly sorting their contents.

Thanks again for the great information.

Bob

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Answer 4

Oct 27, 2018 5:09 PM in response to bobfromsingapore

Thanks to the responses in this thread, I have been able to change the date creation and date modification of all the video files.

Would like to thank Leonie for setting me on the right path.

But as with all good stories there is now a twist. That is in the "Media Created" date. This is a field which you can see in Windows but is not readily visible in Mac, till you import your photos into Apple Pictures.

Apple Pictures sorts the photos not by the creation date but by the "Media Created" date. Unfortunately these dates have been reset during re-encoding of some of my videos. And after much searching I have not been able to bulk change these dates. My videos have:-

1. Correct Filename (file name based on date)

2. Correct Modification and Creation date (thanks to the help in this thread)

3. Wrong "Media Created" date

This means in the "Media Type > Videos" part of Apple Photos, the videos are all out of order. It also means when looked at on the phone they are also out of order.

Being able to force both this folder and the phone to sort only by name would be one fix, but in an ideal world, would like to be able to set the "Media Created" date to that of the Modification and Creation Date. This can be done one video at a time in Photos, but with over 2000 videos, it would be a long and painful process.

Any suggestions?

Bob

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Export Videos - Date and Time as Filename or Creation Date

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