[Digikam-users] Problem concerning the displayed creation date of files without EXIF data.

[Mikolaj Machowski]

On Friday 15 May 2009 23:29:06 Thomas wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, den 14.05.2009, 19:52 +0200 schrieb Mikolaj Machowski:
> > On Wednesday 13 May 2009 19:53:41 Thomas wrote:
> > > Nevertheless, it is strange, that I can't reproduce the dates in a
> > > terminal using 'ls' or something similar.
> >
> > You can check output of exiftool option and look for a possible date
> > there. But if digiKam knows about that date it should be also somewhere
> > in metadata tab on the right somewhere (EXIF, IPTC, XMP).
>
> Since, the files are movies, there are no EXIF, IPTC, or XMP data.
> Furthermore, the shown "created"-date is years after making the movies.
> Probably, the date is the day when I copied the files to the hard drive.

No, this is modification date and this is correct (unless you store those 
files elsewhere for long time before copying to current location). BTW this is 
why metadata is so important should support more than just image formats, but 
this is digression.

> But the problem is that I cannot reproduce the date in a terminal,
> therefore, I have no idea how I could adjust this date to the real
> creation date.
>
> Maybe, someone could tell which C++ function is used to determine the
> creation date if no metadate can be found. This could help me to find a
> way to adjust all creation-dates in a batch process.

On Linux (and most other systems) there is no way for system to know creation 
date of file. What is mostly used for that purpose is mtime - modification 
time. Far from perfect but good enough for most purposes - for examply in your 
case it is correct. digiKam takes data about creation from metadata, because 
in that case there were none metadata it used probably some database related 
activity.

What you need is to put modification date somewhere in digikam database but I 
don't know where...

m.