GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 556141
F-Spot modifies GPS, altitude, and original time/date exif fields on import
Last modified: 2018-07-01 09:00:36 UTC
this report has been filed here: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/f-spot/+bug/277594 "I had about 200 photos on my computer which had been previously copied from my digital camera and which had been tagged with additional lat/long/altitude exif data using the package 'gpscorrelate'. After importing the photos into F-Spot, a number of changes were made to the exif data: - Every few photos had their timestamp moved back two hours (this sounds similar to some of the other bug reports, except that not all photos were affected). - All photos which had identical lat/long/altitude data (meaning, they were taken in the same place) had their original date/time exif field changed to that of the earliest timestamp. In other words, photos that were taken in one place over the course of an hour all had their timestamp changed to the timestamp of the very first photo taken in that location. - Some of the gps and altitude data was wiped or garbled. Again, this didn't happen to all the photos and there didn't seem to be a pattern, but some photos altitude was set to '0', decimal points went missing in lat/long coordinates, or the values were simply changed. Net result, one big mess and several hours of using jhead and gpscorrelate to fix everything. I suppose I brought this on myself by checking the "write metadata to disk" option, but persistent tagging of photos was the whole reason I wanted to try F-Spot." "I'll attach two affected photos. These two were taken in the same spot and subject to the problem of changed time stamps (I fixed the time stamp later with jhead). The altitude data on the second photo is still the same as F-Spot left it, set to 0m. I wish I had kept copies of the photos before I imported and before I fixed stuff with jhead, but I didn't think of it at the time." affected photos: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/18268019/SNC11032.JPG http://launchpadlibrarian.net/18268080/SNC11033.JPG Thanks,
I also just ran into some kind of this issue using F-Spot 0.6 and investigated it a bit further. But right now, only a little bit of GPS exif information is deleted, not messed up otherwise (except the annoying Timezone import bug, but this is another thing). For me, the EXIF data for: - GPS Version ID - GPS Latitude Ref - GPS Longitude Ref - GPS Altitude Ref - GPS Altitude - GPS Latitude - GPS Longitude - GPS Position is left as it is. But for example - GPS Time Stamp - GPS Date/Time is just deleted when "write metadata to file" is enabled. However I discovered that when editing the original file with GIMP, the same metadata is discarded as when using F-Spot. Thus, the error must probably reside in libexif itself. Also when examining the original file using the program "exif" (based upon libexif) the "GPS Time Stamp" does not show up, whereas using "exiftool" (the famous perl one independant of libexif) it shows up. Digging a bit in libexif cvs-repository reveals that the other GPS metadata are committed only in trunk (rev 1.44/1.45) and not yet in the latest libexif version (till now 0.6.17). Any idea what to do apart from waiting?
Created attachment 140980 [details] [review] Patch for libexif 0.6.17 that includes the missing GPS tags I've written a patch for the debian package of libexif 0.6.17 as a temporary solution. See attachment. To recompile the package for debian/ubuntu: - apt-get source libexif12 - sudo apt-get build-dep libexif12 - cd libexif-0.6.17 - patch -p1 < /path/to/patch/add-missing-gps-tags - dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc - Install and be happy If you don't want to build them yourself, I will also upload the two binary packages for debian here.
Created attachment 140981 [details] Patched Debian libexif12 package
Created attachment 140982 [details] Patched Debian libexif-dev package
thanks for investigating, and for posting a solution. just to let you know, the f-spot devs have, as long term "fix" for this (and a _lot_ of other problems), the move to exiv2, which looks much better mantained and reliable.
Comment on attachment 140980 [details] [review] Patch for libexif 0.6.17 that includes the missing GPS tags Marking as reviewed, but obviously, we can't apply this to f-spot.
(In reply to comment #5) > the f-spot devs have, as long term "fix" for this (and a > _lot_ of other problems), the move to exiv2 taglib-sharp actually, but yes, we'll fix these kind of things.
In Debian testing, this bug is fixed now with libexif12 version 0.6.19-1, don't know about Ubuntu though.
f-spot is not under active development anymore, has not seen code changes for five years, and saw its last tarball release in the year 2010. Its codebase has been archived: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Archive/f-spot/commits/master Closing this report as WONTFIX as part of Bugzilla Housekeeping to reflect reality. Please feel free to reopen this ticket (or rather transfer the project to GNOME Gitlab, as GNOME Bugzilla is deprecated) if anyone takes the responsibility for active development again.