P: iPhone video Capture Time is shifted upon Import

[tred56ut]

Beginning with at least the iPhone 4S, and continuing with the 5 and 5s, I see that videos shot with those devices show a capture time that seems to relate to GMT, when it was actually shot at GMT -5.

The videos show a correct creation time in Finder prior to import, but this odd shift occurs upon import. I know that the capture time can be edited in Lightroom, but I'd rather see the correct time on import.

This happens in Lightroom 5.3, but also occurred all the way back into 4.

[arbell15]

I see it different in my library.  I think maybe this is becasue I had imported this video with the old version?  I thought if I deleted it and reimported it it should pick up the correct date, but it looks like the metadata is staying?  how can I flush the old metadata after I delete it before reimporting it?

[arbell15]

I deleted the file and re imported it again and this time it was correct.  The change seems to work sometimes and not other times, i had 2 back to back videos, imported them, one had correct pacific time, other had GMT time.  I sent both of those videos to you.  in that case, i've tried deleting/reimporting the one in GMT and it won't fix itself.

I've also noticed when I import in the folder for these videos, if I hover immediately over a video during import it shows GMT time, and then if I come back 30 seconds later for some of the videos and hover over them, i has correct pacific time, but other vidoes never change.  I think I quickly imported the video above earlier today and imported it while the app thought the time was GMT.  The second time, I waited and imported after it showed pacific time.

There are several nasty bugs in this fix.

[Rick Baumhauer]

I shot a few videos on my iPhone 7+ yesterday, and importing into LR CC 2015.10 mostly worked as it should. Unfortunately, it was only "mostly" - of the eight videos, six came in with the correct timestamps, but two came in off (late) by 4 hours. All were shot with the same settings on the phone.

When I export the original files from Photos, they show the incorrect file creation time in Finder (shifted four hours later than local EDT). The files that imported with the correct time in Lightroom also show the incorrect creation time in Finder (so no difference with the files that show the incorrect time in Lightroom), and all files show the correct time in Photos.

Links to the two files with the incorrect time in LR follow:

https://drive.google.com/a/baumhauerphoto.com/uc?id=0B1l4li0Nl6WGY25NamIzV25HRjQ&export=download

https://drive.google.com/a/baumhauerphoto.com/uc?id=0B1l4li0Nl6WGYnRHZl8tVEdScm8&export=download

[johnrellis]

When I import those samples, LR is correctly reading the capture time recorded in the files:


For IMG_2120.MOV, ExifTool shows the following:

[QuickTime]     Create Date     : 2017:04:19 17:54:06
[QuickTime]     Creation Date   : 2017:04:19 13:54:06-04:00

The first line is the industry-standard QuickTime field recording the date/time in UTC, and the second line is the Apple proprietary field recording it in local time along with a time zone.

What capture times show up for those files in your catalog?  A screenshot of the Metadata panel would be great.

[johnrellis]

"When I export the original files from Photos, they show the incorrect file creation time in Finder (shifted four hours later than local EDT)."

Not many Mac apps maintain the original file creation times these days.  Photos and iPhotos don't, and neither does LR.

[Rick Baumhauer]

John - understood, I just wanted to point out that there was no difference in the data between files that imported with the correct time vs. incorrect time.

Unfortunately, I already changed the time in LR (which doesn't reference the original file, but a copy that is imported directly from my Photos library). I tried deleting those two files and reimporting, but now they come in with the correct time.

It appears that those two files originally imported with the UTC data for some reason - I have LR rename the files on import, and the time is part of my filename. Those two files were named (and sorted) based on the UTC time, not local. I imported all eight videos at the same time, and those two were the only ones that came in with incorrect time (just can't recreate it, unfortunately). If it happens again, I'll leave the copies in LR alone for further testing.

[johnrellis]

If it's an intermittent bug, that will be much harder to track down. Is there any possibility those two files were imported by a previous version of LR?

[Rick Baumhauer]

No - all of the videos were shot yesterday, all imported at the same time into LR 2015.10.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

When importing a video (MOV) from an iPhone 6S to Lightroom 2015 6.10, the date and time imported is incorrect.

In Lightroom, an example video shows 3/4/2009 in LR but correctly 12/24/2015 in Finder.

I'm seeing this across all recently imported videos.

[Smit K]

Hi @jpolastre,

Could you share a sample video? You can send it to keniya@adobe.com

Thanks,
Smit Keniya

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Example video:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0RbSsWZLvUhQ3oxQVpwLVBSNlU/view?usp=sharing

I think this is happening when video is shot in other iOS apps and saved to the camera roll (eg, Hyperloop, Snapchat, etc)

[johnrellis]

Hmm

[herrclich]

Import from iPhone takes date from modified file and not from taken photo.
That seems to be on my system, because on an import I saw already imported photos from some time ago. I do not know why this happens, but maybe this is caused by the face recognition or some iPhone internal routines. nevertheless I checked one specific photo and windows 10 reports the correct capture date and the modified date that is shown as proposed folder in LR 6.10.

Example:
Lightroom shows the date 26.04.2017 on hovering the mouse over the picture during import.
Accessing the iPhone while Windows 10 file Explorer shows 29.03.2017 as 'Date created' and 26.04.2017 as 'Date modified'.
After import into Lightroom the file resides in the subfolder 2017-04-26 and shows the Capture date of 2017-03-29.
This happens only when the import is done directly from the iPhone. Copied from the phone and imported afterward from disk does not have this issue.

If that is the case it would mean that I get really problems with a new phone when it modifies the file (while a new face recognition starts). 

During the last year I use the phone more and more for photos and in fact it destroys my workflow. I get also duplicated files that Lightroom does not recognize. 😞

[johnrellis]

I think this is a different problem from the other reports in this topic.  Here, the capture date appears correct but on import via USB cable the photo is getting moved into the wrong dated folder (whose date differs by over a month).    When the photo is imported directly from the local disk, the issue doesn't occur.

I'm guessing this has the same cause as this long-standing bug: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_import_wrong_folder_names_organizin... . In that bug report, I hypothesized:

"Here's my hypothesis of the bug: When LR reads directly from a card, it is going through the FAT filesystem and getting the capture date from photo's metadata. When it reads via a USB cable, I think it is using the Picture Transport Protocol (or an extension of that).  In the protocol, the capture date is transmitted separately from the photo.  Somewhere in that code path, either in LR or the OS libraries, lies confusion about time zones."

Similarly, my educated guess here is that PTP code (used only when importing via USB cable) in the iPhone, Windows, or LR has gotten confused and is reporting the wrong date for the import folder selection.

[tred56ut]

It's true that "[t]his issue should be fixed in Lightroom CC2015.10/6.10."  It's also true that it should have been fixed in many preceding releases.  Unfortunately, the reality is it is not fixed, and that this seems to be beyond Adobe's ability to fix.  

Refer to the video here:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/5j4z96g8u61bqqc/IMG_6401.MOV?dl=0

I took that on my iPhone 7 (10.3.1) on May 8, 2017 at 7:59 PM CDT.  I imported it to Lr Desktop 2015.10 (macOS 10.12.14) via Lr Mobile on the same iPhone.  LrD shows a capture date of five hours after the actual capture date.  See the screenshot.  

Other videos taken recently and imported in the same manner show the correct capture date in LrD.  The only thing more maddening than a known bug that is ignored for years like this one, but which can be manually fixed, is a known bug that is reportedly fixed (twice!), and which sometimes seems to have actually been fixed, but not always!  

I'd prefer to hear that I'm crazy, or that I've missed something obvious.  I'd prefer that to the alternative, which is that Adobe is still stepping all over it's d*ck trying to fix this.  

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

At the top of this page, you can see that the status was changed to In Progress. The bug is still open and additional fixes are pending. 

[tred56ut]

I think you must have hit Submit prematurely, because surely you meant to add:

"...Adobe sincerely apologizes for issuing two separate releases in which we announced the bug was resolved, but in fact it was not. We know that the last release has made matters worse, not better. We also know that our paying users look to us to make their workflows easier, not harder. We are embarrassed by this clown-like series of errors, and we will soon post instructions by which our users, who we have been treating like unsuspecting beta users, may apply for refunds."

[Smit K]

Hi,

Sorry for delay in response.

I am able to reproduce this issue with Videos captured by other iOS Apps.

But, with the video you have shared, I am not able to see the issue. 

Thanks,
Smit Keniya

[Smit K]

Hi,

Capture Time for Videos captured on Apple's iOS Camera app now shows correct value in Lightroom (CC 2015.10 / 6.10 onwards).

Note:

• Videos captured from other iOS apps like Instagram, Facebook, Hyperloop, Snapchat, etc are shot with MPEG4 Standard. 
• The MPEG4 standard only provides specification of capture time in GMT. That is the reason why each vendor decides (or not) to put time zone info into proprietary location in a proprietary format. 
• Videos by these apps do not have Time Zone info.

Thus, for such videos, Lightroom will only show Capture Time in GMT.

Thanks,
Smit Keniya

[herrclich]

Hi John,
somebody joint topics that are not belonging to each other anymore. My problem is still existent and I do not import movies. Thank you for checking the issue. 

Even if this might be an Apple issue I really get angry now, because the Windows import is sorting the photos correctly on import. Nevertheless the dates are wrong and Lightroom does not provide a function to automatically relocate the photos by their date scheme.
My proposal is still that the issue has nothing to do with time zones, but with modified dates.

When you(Adobe) know you have troubles with your meta data access, why do you not copy the picture to an intermediate location and recheck the file for meta data. Should be no problem, because this process seems to be still not parallelized. 
And if you ask why I am angry - the mismatch of dates is visible in your own SQLite database :-((.

[MarkML]

I am having the same issues as Rick Baumhauer - *some* of the iPhone videos have imported with the correct time, while others have not.  We are now in a way worse situation than before, when the functionality was broken, but at least I could fix it with a batch change.  Now, I have to go through each of hundred of videos and run ExifTool to check whether LR messed it up or not.  Good grief - please can we get a proper fix for this ASAP.  This is costing me huge amounts of time, and just adds volumes to the distrust of the metadata in LR.  

[johnrellis]

"*some* of the iPhone videos have imported with the correct time, while others have not."

If you upload a problem video to Dropbox or similar and post the sharing link here, we might be able to track down the problem. Without a reproducible test case, Adobe is very unlikely to address the issue.

[MarkML]

John - Will try find some examples where I see this happening repeatedly.

[MarkML]

I have been trying and while this defect has clearly not been fixed, it does not occur with the same set of files on each import.  That *is* the defect.  LR randomly imports some correctly, and some incorrectly.  I am not the only one having this issue, so it can't be just my environment.  This is really such a basic function that I shouldn't even have to think about it.  I can reliably and repeatedly extract the correct datetimestamp from all of the MOV files on my iPhone with a simple ExifTool command.  How is LR struggling so badly with this?  So basically I have zero trust in LR metadata for videos from an iPhone, and have to manage it all manually.  Also, LR fails pretty miserably on importing GPS data from iPhone MOV files, although this is reproducible and I will raise a separate defect and attach example files - again this data is easily and reliably extracted with a simple ExifTool command for me.  And finally, many LivePhotos (but not all) imported from iPhone show up as green blobs in LR.  Also reproducible and will raise another defect on this.  This all seems pretty crazy for what is supposed to be top-notch software.  Seems like one of the most used video cameras on the planet is really not tested very much.

[MarkML]

Okay so I've tested this out repeatedly now, and I don't think there is anything special about my iPhone (7 Plus), so can't see why this is so difficult to do.  All LR needs to do is to use the "QuickTime:CreationDate" tag in .MOV files from an iPhone.  It took me all of 5 minutes to write an ExifTool command that copies this value to the QuickTime:CreateDate and QuickTime:ModifyDate tags before I import into LR, and this works 100% perfectly so far, every time I have run an import - no more random LR ridiculousness.  The command I ran is: 

exiftool -overwrite_original "-quicktime:createdate<quicktime:creationdate" "-quicktime:modifydate<quicktime:creationdate” FILE/DIR

I really like LR and I really want to continue using it, but seriously some attention needs to be paid to the video handling.  How can Premiere handle video so effortlessly and yet LR be so horrible at it.  Do these teams hate each other and refuse to share or something?