camera-utility

Command line tool to copy photos and videos (e.g. from SD card) and rename them by date.

Why?

I've been downloading photos from my Canon EOS (DSLR) camera using EOS Utility which puts pictures into directories by date, e.g. like this

2009_02_19/
├── IMG_0030.JPG
├── IMG_0032.JPG
├── IMG_0034.JPG
├── IMG_0037.JPG
├── IMG_0038.JPG

Note that file names are based on sequential number.

Sometimes, I was also downloading photos from my Android phone, which resulted in this:

├── IMG_20190105_120559.jpg
├── IMG_20190105_120600.jpg
└── IMG_20190105_211552.jpg

So I wanted to have a tool which would copy those files in a unified way from both sources. I liked how EOS Utility divided things into sub-directories by date, but I preferred Android's naming scheme, where each photo has the creation date in its name.

This small program does just that. It finds all the photos and videos in the input directory, reads the creation date from EXIF metadata, and copies the file into a sub-directory derived from the date (this can be optionally disabled), renaming it so that the name is also derived from the creation date.

In the output directory result looks something like this:

2019_01_05/
├── IMG_20190105_120559870.jpg
├── IMG_20190105_120600440.jpg
└── IMG_20190105_211552800.jpg

This differs slightly from Android's scheme, in that there are milliseconds also in the time portion of the name. This is to support DSLR's High-Speed Shooting mode, where more than one photo per second is taken.

Supported File Types

Currently camera-util finds files of following types:

• JPG / JPEG (note that extension stays unaffected)
• CR2 (Canon's raw format)
• DNG (Android's raw format)
• MP4 (Video)
• MOV (Video)

How to Use

There are three sub-commands to use:

• copy and move
• check

Usage:                                                                      │
  camera-utility [options] [command]                                        │
                                                                            │
Options:                                                                    │
  --version         Show version information                                │
  -?, -h, --help    Show help and usage information                         │
                                                                            │
Commands:                                                                   │
  copy, cp <src-path> <dst-dir>    Copies suppported image and video files  │
                                   to destination directory and renames     │
                                   them by date recorded in EXIF metadata.  │
  move, mv <src-path> <dst-dir>    Moves suppported image and video files   │
                                   to destination directory and renames     │
                                   them by date recorded in EXIF metadata.  │
  c, check <src-paths>             Scans file or directory for supported    │
                                   image and video files and checks if      │
                                   EXIF metadata is present. [default: .]

Both copy and move commands take the following options:

Arguments:                                                                  │
  <src-path>    Path to a camera file (image or video) or a directory       │
                containing camera files. When a directory is specified,     │
                all sub-directories will be scanned as well.                │
  <dst-dir>     Destination directory root path where files will be copied  │
                or moved into auto-created sub-directories named after      │
                file creation date (e.g. 2019_08_22/), unless               │
                --skip-date-subdir option is present.                       │
                                                                            │
Options:                                                                    │
  -n, --dry-run         If present, no actual files will be transferred.    │
                        The output will contain information about source    │
                        and destination paths.                              │
  -k, --keep-going      Try to continue operation when errors for           │
                        individual files occur.                             │
  --skip-date-subdir    Do not create date sub-directories in destination   │
                        directory.                                          │
  --overwrite           Transfer files even if they already exist in        │
                        destination.

The <src-path> and <dst-dir> are the only required arguments. Remaining options can be added in any combination.

By default (when --keep-going is not used), the application will bail out on first error, e.g. if it cannot read file's EXIF metadata (this can happen for pictures taken with old phone for example). It will also not overwrite any existing files, unless --overwrite option is used.

With --keep-going, there's a report printed by the end containing list of skipped files and those where metadata could not be read.

I'd recommend using the check command first to see if all the files have valid metadata.

The application is written in C# on .NET, I have successfully used in on Windows, Linux and macOS.

Examples

Find all camera files in current directory and check if they contain necessary metadata to derive date-based name for copy or move commands:

camera-utility check

Check a specific directory:

camera-utility check /source/directory/path

Execute a test run to see how files would be copied and renamed:

camera-utility copy /source/directory/path /destination/path --dry-run --keep-going

Move files and ignore errors for files which don't contain metadata:

camera-utility move /source/directory/path /destination/path --keep-going

Copy files directly into /destination/path without the date sub-directory:

camera-utility copy /source/file.jpg /destination/path --skip-date-subdir

etc.

Things to Do

• List of multiple individual files as input (currently only a single file or entire directory is supported)