Change timestamps for objects of mixed types or source

[B.Douille]

This is sometime annoying as it drive to loosing the original date. Either the file creation, file modification or existing metadata which was right in the original are changed to the current date & time.

This occurs when:
1) The source selected for date & time is from metadata (e.g. Exif date digitized)
2) From the objects selected, some of these do not have the specific field selected above (e.g. video clips, images from a scanner or modified with a :@ software which remove metadata).
3) You select the file creation, file modification date or another metadata to be changed

Then, for the objects not having the source data, the value actualy used is the current date and time (in UTC timezone). This is visible by pressing the Next / Previous buttons when multiple objects are selected for a change: The date on the right of the arrow switches to today's date for the specific objects.
By pressing the Apply button, these objects gets a useless timestamp and the original value is definitely lost.

To avoid this, I would suggest to skip the files where the source data doesn't exist.
An alert window could be displayed to inform the user at the end of the file processing "Some files where left unchanged due to the source data selected doesn't exist in those files".

Thanks in advance for an improvement

[B.Douille]

Can we have this improvement added to 1.97?
Always very annoying to loose data without being warned.

Rgds,
Daniel

[marsh]

I can't recreate this problem.

[B.Douille]

I can't recreate this problem.

Simple to demonstrate.
- Find 2 objects: a picture having EXIF dates and a picture from a scanner or a video clip. Select them.
- Start the Change timestamp feature and select the picture having EXIF dates.
- Select digitized date as source and file modification date as field to be changed. The window shows the digitized date right to the file modification date, which is correct.
- Then, navigate to the image scanned or the video, the date on the right changes to the current date and time, which isn't expected.
- If you press the start button you'll loose the original file modification date of all files not having metadata.

[xnview]

So you would like that if a file has not EXIF, then no modification?

[B.Douille]

Yes Pierre, no modification. The existing values are more relevant than the current date & time.

Having some kind of alert or a flag would help users to quickly understand why some files will be (or have been) excluded. Best than a paragraph in the user guide

Thnks in advance,
Daniel

[oops66]

So you would like that if a file has not EXIF, then no modification?

Yes, I support too, +1

[B.Douille]

I see there was no more supporters for this request , maybe due to this statement being a bit too restrictive:

So you would like that if a file has not EXIF, then no modification?

The solution is not to excludes files not having EXIF data: A wrong date & time is set when a specific field doesn't exist in the EXIF stream. So The solution is to exclude files where the specified source field is'nt valid (no available, null, greyed in the dialog window).

Nice to have: An exclamation point in front of the source field would be welcome if one ore more files have this field missed.

Daniel

[xnview]

Please try XnView 1.98 beta 1

[B.Douille]

Many thanks Pierre, it works fine and will prevent loosing precious time/date information.