I am transcoding a lot of old home videos that were originally imported to iMovie. The old iMovie used a codec (Apple Intermediate Codec) that doesn't work in the Photos app, thus, I am transcoding to h.264 prior to importing. The problem is that I lose the creation date when I run them through Handbrake.
There is an old app called HandBrakeBatch that had a setting to preserve the creation and modification dates, but that is not a feature with HandBrake.
The particularly challenging problem is that even if I use Shell Script to change the creation and modification dates, the Photos app still tags the video with the date I ran it through HandBrake (I have no idea how that is, as I can't find that date in the metadata).
Any suggestions as to how to retain the creation date?
Preserve Creation Date
Forum rules
An Activity Log is required for support requests. Please read How-to get an activity log? for details on how and why this should be provided.
An Activity Log is required for support requests. Please read How-to get an activity log? for details on how and why this should be provided.
Re: Preserve Creation Date
HB won't do this. If your choice of library management apps isn't reading the file creation dates after you modify them, you will need to research what metadata (maybe exif) your library management app is using.
tdarr, the successor to HBB, may do this.
tdarr, the successor to HBB, may do this.
-
Silent_Strider
- Enlightened
- Posts: 102
- Joined: Tue Dec 17, 2019 9:31 pm
Re: Preserve Creation Date
I'm not sure if touch exists on Mac, but I know it has parameters to just copy dates over from source to destination. In Handbrake Preferences, at "When done" one can set up a "Send file to" with arguments. I suppose one could place touch in there with arguments.
Re: Preserve Creation Date
Touch does exist, and I have tried both that and Setfile which can similarly change the creation date.Silent_Strider wrote: ↑Thu Apr 13, 2023 3:25 pm I'm not sure if touch exists on Mac, but I know it has parameters to just copy dates over from source to destination. In Handbrake Preferences, at "When done" one can set up a "Send file to" with arguments. I suppose one could place touch in there with arguments.
The problem appears to be that the Photos app is pulling a date from much deeper in the exif data.
My original file has very little metadata, and Photos defaults to the creation date. HandBrake encodes a lot of other info in the exif data, and Photos appears to be pulling one of those other dates, and I have not found a parameter that can edit anything other than the basic creation/modification/access dates.