soml-prepmedia

A web interface to make it a bit easier to set metadata about media (movie, pic) files. It uses Exiftool on the back end. (Actually, exiftool works on all kinds of files, but media is what I'm interested in.)

Purpose

To be used for cataloging Story of My Life (SoML) media.

SoML will basically be a blog of events, where the date of the media available is pulled into the blog article with the same date. Because I haven't yet found a good API for exactly how that will work, I'm capturing as much important information as possible in this web interface for my purposes: the file name, location, and description (in the title field).

Installing the app

Install Perl (for Windows, I use Strawberry Perl) and ImageMagick.

With CPAN, install some Perl modules, including Mojolicious and some plugins:

cpan
install Image::Exiftool
install MIME::Base64
install Mojolicious
install Mojolicious::Plugin::JSONConfig
install Mojolicious::Plugin::StaticCache
quit

Using the thing

1. Run server.pl and open http://localhost:8989 in a browser. Size the browser so there's plenty of room in the EXIF data area. Next to the app, open a file explorer window with the files you want to work on.

   Note: The app sets filenames based on EXIF data, but it doesn't parse filenames to see if they contain datetime data to choose from. If you are working on files that have already captured the timestamps in the filename (and you'll want to use those timestamps), I'm running the Windows exiftool.exe on the files beforehand to capture that date and time in the EXIF data so that the web app can make use of it. Both images and videos have DateTimeOriginal, so let's use that.

   exiftool "-datetimeoriginal<filename" -overwrite_original *.mp4
   

   (If you're on Mac or Linux and need another way to do this, lemme know.)

2. Choose a batch of files belonging to a common event and apply a set of common values to the files.

   1. Enter data about those files in the Replacement values section.
   2. Specify the path to those files. (Browser app can't determine the local path.)
   3. Select and drag those files from your explorer onto the file drop pad in the app. The perl server provides existing file info that's "relevant (to me)".
   4. Click Apply values to write the replacement values to each file. (Original values are kept in the title attributes of each field.)

3. In the EXIF data area, select the date you want to use, change, revert, reapply, or otherwise tweak all the data fields to how you want them. Get everything displayed how you want it because what is shown is what will be sent to the server.

4. Click Submit, which writes the JSON request to be sent to the server and displays it.

5. Review the details and click Confirm and write to files or cancel (and keep tweaking or whatever).

File name and metadata details

Data captured and set:

• Files named as local {{date}}_{{time}} followed by a brief description
• EXIF GMT "datetime original", by selecting from various options that the file might already have stored based on your camera
• EXIF title, for extended descriptive information
• EXIF location information; to use the little map displayed with the show button (not required), you'll need a paid Google account

As you can see, because it's mainly for family archive purposes and not professional photography, the main fields I care about are the file name, location, and description. But it should leave any other fields undisturbed.

• Some photo applications can index images by EXIF data, yet for better archiving and simpler implementation, it's nice to also be sortable and searchable by file name.
• Hopefully soml will have a way to map the data geographically.
• As for comments, the idea is for soml itself to log the event details, but in case soml is lost, at least the names and events will be captured in the media Title fields.

Example file naming convention

I'm using this to catalog images before this century, which means I won't always know the exact date and time. There are standards emerging on how to represent estimated dates, but we're not there yet. Since I'd like the ordering to remain somewhat consistent, I'm hoping the following standard will work for my stuff. Have a folder for each year and a decades folder for unsure stuff (e.g. ..., 1978, 1979, 1970s)

Filename format	EXIF time	Description
YYYYmmDD_HHMMSS_desc	HHMMSS+zone	exact date and time known
YYYYmmDD_000000_desc	200000 GMT	exact date known (not time) - midnight PST will be 8 p.m. GMT
YYYYmm00_mmm_desc	200000 GMT	exact month known e.g. 19860900_Sep_21st-birthday-party
YYYY{02,05,08,11}00_NQ_desc	200000 GMT	exact season known e.g. 19860500_2Q_first-communion
YYYY{03,09}00_{1H,2H}_desc	200000 GMT	first or second half of year known e.g. 19860900_2H_sophomore-first-semester
YYYY0000_YR_desc	200000 GMT	exact year known only e.g. 19860000_YR_sophomore-college
YYY0s_desc	200000 GMT	rough decade known (put in separate decade folder e.g. 1970s)

---

Old CLI (Don't use)

It's here, but I'd recommend NOT using cli-prepmedia.pl. I started with this CLI, but didn't feel I had enough control, particularly in choosing which date to use while handling a batch of files. I thus created a web app instead. I haven't updated it in a while and don't know exactly what EXIF fields it sets.

Dependencies:

• Perl modules: Image::ExifTool, File::DosGlob (if Windows), File::Glob

Procedure:

cli-prepmedia.pl [ -o ]( -d <dirname> | -f <filename-or-wildcard> )

For a file, flat directory of files, or fileset, enter the data you want to set.

• GPS latitude, longitude (entered as comma separated string, per google maps)
• Date and time the content pertains to (when the event happened)
• Comment about the image (subject matter, people involved, tags)

If these are already set (such as with modern cameras), it skips them except for the comment, where it will ask if you want to override it.

Finally, if the file isn't already named according to the DateTimeOriginal naming convention, it renames the file based on its own datetime, or if not present in the EXIF, the one you specify, with indexes tacked on the end if necessary for uniqueness.

Example:

C:\MyPics>perl prepmedia.pl -f samples\IMAG01*

Will work on the following files:
samples\IMAG0101.jpg
samples\IMAG0102.jpg
Proceed? (y|n) (or 'q' to quit)
=> y
The DateTime the media was taken as YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS(+|-)ZZZZ (or 'q' to quit)
=> 20190303_170000-0700
Descriptive new stubname (or blank to keep the existing basename) (or 'q' to quit)
=> DinnerParty
Gimme the Lat, Long coordinates (or 'q' to quit)
=> 47.63238063169254, -122.34962249554108
Wanna add a comment? (y|n) (or 'q' to quit)
=> y
Comment (or 'q' to quit)
=> Uncle Joe, Sarah, Dawn, and Dave
Writing samples\IMAG0101.jpg to samples\picz\20190303_185212_DinnerParty.jpg..
Writing samples\IMAG0102.jpg to samples\picz\20190303_185248_DinnerParty.jpg..

Notes

• Tested on Windows 10, but should work on Mac and Linux.
• See TODO file and TODO comments in source