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Allow creating and editing XMP files for Videos

Posted: Sat Jan 01, 2022 6:49 pm
by bwmarrin
First off, I love XnView! It's been a handy addition to my workflow.

While I mainly work with photographs, more and more, I'm also taking small videos too.

I REALLY wish I could create XMP sidecar files for videos where I can save some basic metadata like the title, description, and some keywords, etc. However currently whenever I select a video file the Edit XMP menu option is greyed out.

What would be really handy is maybe a config option to let users set what file types they would like to store XMP data for - which might help with the ever increasing number of image and video file types that keep showing up :)

Maybe there's some tricky technical issue with creating XMP files for things other than pictures but it would be very helpful to to keyword, title, and such video files!

Also maybe I'm doing it wrong and this already works - so if that's the case feel free to point me at the setting or whatever to enable it :)


Thank you!

Re: Allow creating and editing XMP files for Videos

Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2022 10:38 pm
by bwmarrin
To expand on this, being able to use the Edit IPTC option with the save to XMP file along with using categories that save to XMP.

What I'm asking is that video files be first class citizens with regards to the database and xmp files. I understand it may not be able to write embedded metadata into the files themselves but that's similar to RAW image files that many prefer to be left unaltered anyhow.

Thank you!

I'd happily throw a donation toward this feature if there's a way to vote with my wallet.

Re: Allow creating and editing XMP files for Videos

Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2022 4:42 pm
by michel038
For video files , you can create sidecar files only by adding keywords through categories.


On supported graphic formats:
Settings>Metadata> "Update or create XMP Sidecar" only , must be enabled
... For most metadata, you can use :
Tools>Metadata>Edit Iptc or Ctrl i or Edit xmp.
Choose "XMP Only" in Last tab (Options) ...
Edit some metadata > Write
These metadata will be saved in xmp sidecar file.

So, a trick is to create a jpg screenshot of each video with same name, create xmp sidecar for these jpg's, and perhaps move screenshots into another place ...

Re: Allow creating and editing XMP files for Videos

Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2022 2:24 am
by bwmarrin
thanks for the response @michel038.

I did figure out being able to add categories to video files and that is helpful.

But I would still really like having the Edit XMP/IPTC (with save to XMP) options to also work for video files. Currently, both of those are greyed out anytime I have a video file selected :( This would allow me to set other basic metadata like author, description, location info -- all of that is still super useful for video files and would help me tremendously to be able to set them. Since it can all be stored in the xmp sidecar file it seems like it wouldn't be too difficult to allow that - but maybe there's some technical obstacles I'm not thing about.