How to sort by date

[topaz narwhal]

I've got many images & videos that are not properly sorted, look at this screenshot: this as many other appear to be in 2024 but if you read the name of the file, it's from 2023.

Is there a way to fix this?

[fervent hull]

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[twin summit]

Judging by the file name that seems to be a whatsapp video?

[topaz narwhal]

yeah

[twin summit]

Whatsapp really butchers metadata, so it's expected to fail

Like, the image basically has nothing else except the filename

Only thing you can do is fix the metadata yourself beforehand, either with some script or by doing it manually

[topaz narwhal]

oh

so there's no way to make it automatic with immich? just by reading the file name

[twin summit]

Nope. A file name isn't really explicit enough. There are like a million different ways of how you can write some sort of date in there, so it's really not something immich can/should fix

Just because you'd need to add edge cases for way too many services, and presumably also take care of different regions, idk

For instance the file name lacks a timezone

Or a time in general

[topaz narwhal]

So if I make a script that modifies the metadata of each image in the folder used by immich it wont break it right? like, the image hash or whatever mechanism immich uses to recognise an already uploaded image

[twin summit]

You would need to upload the assets again for immich to recognize them

[topaz narwhal]

🥲

[twin summit]

Or well, re-running metadata extraction should also fix it

[topaz narwhal]

oh

[topaz narwhal]

I've got a script that does that, but now I'm not sure on where to find the images to modify them... https://share.ldflabs.com/XuYA5/KURiFOdE60.mp4
this is not right, right?

The program I made looks for files like Pattern.compile("IMG-(\\d{8})-WA\\d+\\.jpg") as their name, extract the date and puts it in their metadata buuuuut now that i just need to run it, im not sure where are those images supposed to be 😅

[twin summit]

Right, so you have two options Either fix the metadata beforehand and re-upload, or use the storage template to give the files their original name first

[topaz narwhal]

ugh im trying to understand how it works... (the storage template) do you know how could I do that?

[topaz narwhal]

also, is the folder here the right one? are those the photos? or just thumbnails?

[twin summit]

upload are the originals

[twin summit]

You need to be more specific about your question :D

[topaz narwhal]

ok srry ;)
My program can edit each .jpg metadata it finds, it worked on files with the name like IMG-20230707-WA0024.jpg but clearly immich renamed them all... (tell me pls if there are faster way to do this, it's just the first idea I've got).
So now I either can extract the date from the new name immich gave to the photos or I find a way to get them to have their old names back... You suggested me to use the storage template. Would it work with already stored images? how can I used it torename all the images to its orginal names?

[twin summit]

After setting the storage template, you can run the storage template job (https://my.immich.app/admin/jobs-status) and it'll update all files

[stuck fable]

In storage template, you can make immich use the actual image name:

So..do that..then run storage migration job..then make your program edit those files

[twin summit]

I'd add the "check the files got renamed" step but otherwise that sounds about right, yep

[topaz narwhal]

oks I'm baking upp everything and then I'll try this

[stuck fable]

Also - I use whatsapp extensively, so, I get your feeling.

I run this command using exiftool every month - to make sure all my whatsapp assests have the correct exif date.. It was a pain to fix all those images when I moved from google photos to immich.

LIBRARY_PATH="/mnt/user/images/immich/library"

For Images
exiftool "-alldates<filename" -r -P -overwrite_original -if '((not $datetimeoriginal) and ($filetype eq "HEIC" or $filetype eq "JPEG" or $filetype eq "jpg" or $filetype eq "scr"))' "$LIBRARY_PATH"

For videos
exiftool "-AllDates<filename" -r -P -api:QuicktimeUTC -api largefilesupport=1 -overwrite_original -if '(((not $Quicktime:CreateDate) or ($Quicktime:CreateDate eq "0000:00:00 00:00:00")) and ($filetype eq "MP4" or $filetype eq "MOV"))' "$LIBRARY_PATH"

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE BACKUPS! AND TEST THESE COMMANDS BEFORE YOU RUN ON THE ENTIRE LIBRARY. It replaces the original assets with the edited one. So, there is always a chance to mess things up.

[twin summit]

If you moved from google photos, you cou've also just used a google takeout and immich-go, no?

Or did they have the incorrect metadata in gphotos as well?

[stuck fable]

There was no immich-go at that time...my bad luck! lol

[stuck fable]

since there was no dateTimeOriginal, the only thing it had was 'FileModifiedDate' - that thing might change when you copy/move the files (not entire sure). And some tools I found online didnt do a good job

[stuck fable]

Yeah. Gphotos was also messed.

I hate it when photos are out of order..and there was no programatic way to edit photos exif in google photos (manually doing it was not an option)...

Then came this beautiful thing called Immich!

[twin summit]

Ah, because it got added to gphotos immediately it was less broken, makes sense

[twin summit]

Unfortunately it's still painful for an initial ingest, but I'd argue that we can't even do much about it

It's just whatsapp doing a really bad job (although you might say that's good with regards to privacy)

[stuck fable]

Yeap. Definitely good for privacy...My parents would just share their location to the world that way! haha

[twin summit]

I mean... it's one thing stripping geodata and another stripping the creation date

But yeah

[topaz narwhal]

OK the files got renamed and the metadata should be updated too, what should I do to dell immich to reorder them now?

[twin summit]

Reorder?

You mean telling immich to extract metadata again?

[topaz narwhal]

yeah, I think I just did it, it's working on it rn

[stuck fable]

@native bay Yeah. I use ios, and the file name is just a random id. But if you think the data shown on immich is correct, then the following will work.

Enable the storage template and use a format like:
{{y}}-{{MM}}-{{dd}}-T{{HH}}-{{mm}}-{{ss}}
You will get a file name like 2022-02-03-T04-56-05.jpg

Then you can use the commands I used to basically set all the exif tags from the filename set by immich. This is what I do, and it works great so far.