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n8gray / Backup-Bouncer

A metadata test suite for OS X backup tools
http://n8gray.org/code/backup-bouncer
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ExifTool for additional file metadata, especially for media? #1

Closed RobLewis closed 14 years ago

RobLewis commented 14 years ago

I'm over my head here, but I use the great ExifTool to read and write metadata for media files. Seems like it could perhaps be integrated into Backup-Bouncer to add capabilities. It includes a Perl library as well as a command-line tool.

n8gray commented 14 years ago

Hi Rob,

ExifTool is very nice, I agree, but image metadata lives at a different level compared to filesystem metadata, which is what BB tests. To be slightly technical, image metadata lives inside the file; filesystem metadata does not. Any time you faithfully copy an image file you'll preserve all image metadata, even if you use a tool that fails every BB filesystem metadata test.

You do need to worry about preserving image metadata when you're loading and saving images in an image editor, but not when you're making backups -- any backup tool will preserve it perfectly.