Edit Capture Time Multiple Images Not Working

[skD1am0nd]

For the last few days, I tried to capture about 80 images for a stop-motion/GIF of me assembling a bicycle. My camera had unreliable power and the capture date is all wrong (some for today, some in 2014, etc). No problem I thought I'll import into lightroom, sort by filename (which is the right order) and then set them all to the same capture time. I'm in grid view, select the first picture then CMD-A to select all of them. Then I go to MetaData-> Edit Capture time, click the radio buttton for "Adjust to a specfied time and date", set the data and time to June 2, 2022 at 8PM, fianlly I click the "Change All" button.

Well the reults are confusing. The first picture has the right time and date, the date for the second is right but the time is 7:00:31 PM, for the third it is 7:01:11 PM ... this continues on until photo #15 at tthat point the date is 2013 (which is probably was when my camera reset power). So it seems it is only changing capture time for the first 15 of my 80 photos and on those it is incrementing by 30-60 seconds for each picture. 

I do find that I can scroll down, choose one picture, and successfully change the date for tha picture. Any ideas what is going on?

P.S. My setup if it matters: 

Lightroom Classic version: 11.3.1 [ 202204181225-f90ebff5 ]
License: Creative Cloud
Language setting: en-US
Operating system: Mac OS 12
Version: 12.4.0 [21F79]
Application architecture: arm64
Logical processor count: 10
Processor speed: NA
SqLite Version: 3.36.0
Built-in memory: 65,536.0 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 65,536.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 10,546.0 MB (16.0%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 421,463.2 MB
Memory cache size: 7,667.4MB
Internal Camera Raw version: 14.3 [ 1072 ]
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 864MB / 32767MB (2%)
Camera Raw real memory: 863MB / 65536MB (1%)
Displays: 1) 5120x2880, 2) 3024x1964

Graphics Processor Info:
Metal: Apple M1 Max

Application folder: /Applications/Adobe Lightroom Classic
Library Path: /Users/scottdiamond/Diamond_Image_DB/DIAMOND_LR_CATALOG/DIAMOND_LR_CATALOG-2-v10-v11.lrcat
Settings Folder: /Users/scottdiamond/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom

Installed Plugins:
1) AdobeStock
2) Aperture/iPhoto Importer Plug-in
3) Facebook
4) Flickr
5) Nikon Tether Plugin

Config.lua flags: None

[johnrellis]

"I'll import into lightroom, sort by filename (which is the right order) and then set them all to the same capture time."

When you invoke Edit Capture Time on multiple photos and click Change All, it doesn't set them all to the same time. Rather, it shifts the time of all the photos by the same amount.  Here's how the command itself describes it at the top of the window:

"Modify the capture time stored in the selected photos by entering the correct time adjust for the photo displayed to the left. Other photos (but not videos) will be adjusted by the same amount of time."

[richardplondon]

Yes, this feature isn't "change TO", it is "change BY".

So a chosen date/time can instead be imposed directly in Library, Metadata panel, with identical new details filled in for, or else synced across, the whole set. This new situation would still not embody the right capture sequence (when sorting by date - you would have to continue sorting by filename, to see that).

Accordingly IMO it is better to work selectively, and to use the 'shift date and time' feature just on those photos showing incorrect dates. The aim being to reinstate all the proper relative time offsets from shot to shot. If you have already date-and-time shifted the lot regardless, then it may be that you now need to address just those that have been inappropriately moved forwards in time. Their originally recorded date and time can still be viewed in the Metadata panel, alongside the standard Date and Time field - as subsequently altered.

[skD1am0nd]

Thanks for clarifying. If I understand what you are saying. LRCC will calculate, for my first photo an offset (say 1,314,000 seconds) which brings that photo to my specificed capture date/time and then will use that same offset for all the remaining photos?

I guess this leads to question 2. Is there anyway in LRCC to do what I want? That is set all the photos to one exact capture date/time?

[richardplondon]

I believe you can impose that information onto a batch of photos in the Metadata panel in Develop - but cannot currently check. Failing that there are several other means, right up to writing out metadata and modifying it with an external utility, then reading it back in. I doubt you need to go to that extent. Also, if these photos were in fact taken in a certain sequence, would it not be better to preserve this sequence and these time offsets, rather than to obliterate all difference of timing between the photos?

So, say you have some photos taken 2022-06-10 at 10:03am, 10:04am... Then at 10:22am the camera clock changes (wrongly) and so your next photos wrongly report 2014-03-09 at 09:00am, 09:04am etc. After a while you correct the camera clock and subsequently taken photos show their actual times of 10:35am, 10:36am etc on 2022-06-10. Your task would be to update just the group of photos which show wrong date and time. The first one (reporting 2014-03-09 at 09:00am) would need to be changed to 10:22am on 2022-06-10 instead. The next one which reports 9:04am, is therefore 4 mins later, so would be updated automatically to 10:22 + 4 = 10:26am on the corrected day, which is more or less the actual time that one was taken. And the same, going progressively forward in time, for the others too. The last of this batch would then slot in just before the following shot (the next one you took after correcting the camera clock), so everything now appears in proper chronological order and with the right number of minutes interval between, just as if the camera clock had not had any problem.

[skD1am0nd]

Wow! Thanks for taking the time to read my message in detail and respond. Yes, please let me know if this can be done in develop module. As you comment I suspect there is way with export/import and/or some LRCC utility but I was curious to know if it could be done in LRCC

And to your point about walking through my photos batch-by-batch to roughly maintain the sequence, you are entirely right. I think as you were writing up your response, I was simultaneously in lightroom doing exactly what you said. I guess I was asking the question to better understand lightroom.

I have to say it feels good to understand this finally. A few times over the last few years I’ve tried to use this feature and did not understand what lightroom was doing. I was thinking there was a bug in lightroom. It is satisfying to now know how to use this feature.

[BennyNova]

Thanks for posting this issue and all the subsequent detailed community responses. My frustration is that setting new capture dates that are slightly incremental and also match the file sequence actually works fine on an older desktion mac, running a slightly older version of LRC, but when I perform the same task (grid view, library module) is pushed the times all out of whack. Truly annoying, and makes absolultely no sense from a programming standpoint, b/c it's reasonable that any new incremental capture time sequence would (at least could) also refrence the filename sequence. Don't want to have to pay for that plugin, but I might have to. Any thoughts on the plugin fix?

[johnrellis]

"I guess this leads to question 2. Is there anyway in LRCC to do what I want?"

You'll need the Capture Time To Exif plugin, which can set a batch of photos all to the same capture date/time or set them to have times increasing by one second from the first photo.

[skD1am0nd]

Very cool. I like that it is all in LR, I'll get this. Thanks.