[Digikam-users] Updating XMP metadata for a group of files?

[Remco Viëtor]

On Friday 10 August 2012 16:01:41 Simon Cropper wrote:
> Hi Remco,
> 
> No I am not talking about tags.
> 
> I am talking about updating the metadata information.
> 
> If you select a file and using the menu select "Image > Metadata > Edit 
> all Metadata", a dialog box appears that allows you to update the data 
> inserted into the image header.
> 
> If you select the 'Keywords" icon in the left toolbar you are presented 
> with a range of keywords, or the option to add keywords. This is what I 
> am talking about. In general this sequence edits the metadata for one 
> image at a time. I am interested in updating several images at a time.
> 
> 
> Specifically the XMP
> 
That helped to understand the problem :)

After looking through a few of my XMP files, I can find all tags applied as 
   <digiKam:TagsList>
    <rdf:Seq>
     <rdf:li>xxx/xxx</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>xxx</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>yyy/yyy</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>yyy</rdf:li>
    </rdf:Seq>
   </digiKam:TagsList>
   <MicrosoftPhoto:LastKeywordXMP>
    <rdf:Seq>
     [same list as in <digiKam:TagsList>]
    </rdf:Seq>
   <dc:subject>
    <rdf:Bag>
     <rdf:li>xxxx</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>xxx</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>xxxx</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>xxx</rdf:li>
    </rdf:Bag>
   </dc:subject>
   </MicrosoftPhoto:LastKeywordXMP>
   <lr:hierarchicalSubject>
    <rdf:Bag>
     [same list as in <digiKam:TagsList>]
    </rdf:Bag>
   </lr:hierarchicalSubject>

Those can be applied to a group of (RAW) images

However, those don't show up as IPTC or XMP metadata. I'm not even sure 
from what I've seen that Digikam XMPs store IPTC or XMP data entered 
through the metadata dialog you mentioned: after using that dialog to enter 
IPTC and XMP keywords, those keywords didn't show up. Worse, the Digikam 
tags listed above /disappeared/.

I got this instead:
   <dc:subject>
    <rdf:Bag>
     <rdf:li>Test</rdf:li>
    </rdf:Bag>
   </dc:subject>

So it seems that, for RAW files at least, you'll have to decide to use 
either the album interface or the metadata editor, mixing both seems like a 
bad idea.

I use the following settings for metadata:
X read from sidecars
X write to sidecars
        Write to XMP sidecar fro read-only images only

Specifically, I do not write metadata to RAW files.

I hope this helps

Remco

P.S. I'd like to know what is the intent behind using sidecar files in 
Digikam: there seems to be some counter-intuitive behaviour wrt metadata 
storage, leading to data apparently disappearing from the sidecar. This is 
not visible from the normal interface, as that uses the database, and not 
the sidecars.
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