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Creation time changes when dragging photo or video to desk top

When I drag a video from Photos to the desktop, the creation time changes. It looks like an hour is added for videos with a creation date after March 12th, the day daylight savings went into effect. Is that a known bug, or do I have a setting set wrong? (Exporting, BTW, changes both creation and modification date to the time of export).

Posted on Jul 18, 2023 2:21 PM

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Posted on Jul 18, 2023 2:31 PM

There are two sets of metadata associated with an image file: 1 - the EXIF metadata and 2 - the file metadata. Whenever a file is copied or duplicated the file metadata will change. The EXIF metadata does not.


The Finder only sees the File metadata except when in the column view mode;



7 replies

Jul 19, 2023 11:31 AM in response to DiegoSchaaf

You can check the basic movie metadata date via QuickTime Player:



But if you want to see all the gory details of movie metadata mess, use exiftool or GraphicConverter or some other 3rd party tool. For example, check almost all dates with a command like:


exiftool -a -G1 -s -fileOrder5 FileName -api LargeFileSupport=1 -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -FileCreateDate -Time:All 2006-0606-1206-06.mp4 
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:02:01 12:01:01+02:00
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2002:02:02 12:02:02+02:00
[System]        FileAccessDate                  : 2023:07:19 21:15:46+03:00
[System]        FileInodeChangeDate             : 2023:07:19 21:16:27+03:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2001:02:01 12:01:01+02:00
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[QuickTime]     ModifyDate                      : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[Track1]        TrackCreateDate                 : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[Track1]        TrackModifyDate                 : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[Track1]        MediaCreateDate                 : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[Track1]        MediaModifyDate                 : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[Track2]        TrackCreateDate                 : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[Track2]        TrackModifyDate                 : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[Track2]        MediaCreateDate                 : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[Track2]        MediaModifyDate                 : 2003:03:03 12:03:03+02:00
[UserData]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2004:04:04 12:04:04+02:00
[Keys]          CreationDate                    : 2005:05:05 12:05:05+02:00


That is a test movie where all dates are deliberately set different. Photos.app grabs the date in this order:


Keys:CreationDate

QuickTime:CreateDate

UserData:DateTimeOriginal

MacOS:FileCreateDate


So for that movie Photos.app and QuickTime Player display '2005:05:05 12:05:05+02:00'. If there is no date metadata, as a last resort Photos.app grabs it from the (very fragile) FileCreateDate. Local times, UTC times, DST, GPS locations are flies in that ointment.


Jul 19, 2023 10:53 AM in response to Old Toad

Thank you for your answer. Switching to column view is a useful tip I didn't know, and it works perfectly to display the EXIF info for pictures.


For videos, though, the info doesn't seem to include the "content created" column. So that strange time shift in the file creation date is still puzzling. "Photos" displays the correct info - drawn from whatever form of metadata is available, I suppose, but the file creation date is off. I tracked down the actual video file in the Photo library before copying it onto the desk top and was surprised to see that, even though Photos showed the correct time, the file's creation time showed an extra hour even inside the Photos library.



Jul 19, 2023 11:56 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Interesting.

Following your suggestion, I put the file through the metadata2go web page, and it reported the correct creation time - in UTC.

I created the video on 7/11/23 at 12.26pm Pacific Daylight Savings Time. Photos reports that correctly, Ventura OS shows it as 1.26pm, and metadata2go has it at 19:26 - which is 12:26pm PT. So the one that is off is the creation time reported by VenturaOS.

Jul 19, 2023 12:32 PM in response to Old Toad

> Videos do not have the EXIF metadata fields


Yes... There is no standard for embedding EXIF data in a movie but that has not stopped a lot of camera makers from forcing it into the file. If that kind of EXIF is inside an embedded ThumbnailImage (like in some Canon models), it might be laboriously edited or deleted with exiftool if some app erroneously grabs it. For example Canon 6D .mov dates are a big mess with EXIF date in the thumbnail (here listed as ExifIFD):


exiftool -a -G1 -s -fileOrder5 FileName -api LargeFileSupport=1 -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -FileCreateDate -Time:All 2020-0601-1200-00_canon6d.mov 
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[System]        FileAccessDate                  : 2022:11:28 11:43:13+02:00
[System]        FileInodeChangeDate             : 2023:07:19 22:17:54+03:00
[MacOS]         FileCreateDate                  : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[QuickTime]     CreateDate                      : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[QuickTime]     ModifyDate                      : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track1]        TrackCreateDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track1]        TrackModifyDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track1]        MediaCreateDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track1]        MediaModifyDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track2]        TrackCreateDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track2]        TrackModifyDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track2]        MediaCreateDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track2]        MediaModifyDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track3]        TrackCreateDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track3]        TrackModifyDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track3]        MediaCreateDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Track3]        MediaModifyDate                 : 2020:06:01 12:00:00+03:00
[Keys]          LocationDate                    : 2015:08:08 13:03:06+03:00
[IFD0]          ModifyDate                      : 2015:08:08 13:02:57
[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 2015:08:08 13:02:57
[ExifIFD]       CreateDate                      : 2015:08:08 13:02:57
[Canon]         TimeZone                        : +03:00
[Canon]         TimeZoneCity                    : Cairo
[Canon]         DaylightSavings                 : On
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTime                      : 55
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTimeOriginal              : 55
[ExifIFD]       SubSecTimeDigitized             : 55


Notice that that summer movie has +1 hour DST adjustment +03:00 while in winter movies it should be automatically via the computer's clock system set as +02:00 for that location. ...I wish DST was cancelled (in fact a few years ago there was a well-received proposition to do that in the EU but it has now been buried in the bureucracy. And here locally people argue fiercely should we then fix to the "standard" winter time or summer time and whether sunny time should be more in the morning or more in the evening...).



Creation time changes when dragging photo or video to desk top

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