Include EXIF data with saved photos from camera

Wishlist Maybe Later
1

Hi Wyze team,

I often take a snapshot of my little one in is crib, he has quite the funny sleeping positions. I do that through the phone app (android). I downloaded them all off my phone and wanted to rename them by date and time, grabbing the original taken date/time from the EXIF data, but found out that

  1. they are all PNG and do not save the original date/time
  2. they have a trivial naming like this: A4DA222C277C_1568087406309.png or like this A4DA222C277C.png (I actually have 4 named this, but taken at different times)

This is horribly impractical; I have to look at each picture and manually change the date/time of the file name.

Can you please save the date and time in the filename, that would be very practical; of course, saving the photo as a jpg with the original taken time (grabbed from phone or camera) in the exif data would be ideal.

thanks

2

This A4DA222C277C is most like the MAC Address of your camera.

Your picture was taken at 9/9/2019, 8:50:06 PM.

The number is the number of milliseconds since the Unix Epoch. This site can help you convert them -

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3

Thanks for the tip, I would have never guessed that. It would be ideal to have the date/time in the EXIF data though. I get that this may be super easy for the coders, but it’s super impractical for the end user. At least a switch in the app to set the format of the date/time code in the filename when it gets saved.

I also have several pictures that have no date/time in this format, just the MAC address of the camera… not sure if this was an issue due to the app version…

I have read that PNG files support EXIF as of 2017; if this is true I would expect the PNG file to contain the accurate taken time, can you please add it?

4

Does Wyze look at these posts? I’m curious if I should submit/send them an email about this.

Does anyone know of a utility that can change the filename and convert the epoch code to a formatted date/time? I can’t find anything, which makes this renaming manual and very impractical.

Thanks

5

They do review these posts and can eventually implement them. However, changes take time.

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6

Support would just bounce you back over here. I just spoke about this with the team to make sure they’re aware of your request. :slight_smile:

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7

@UserCustomerGwen Wow that’s awesome, thanks!

I’m curious why PNG files are used; is it because they are smaller than a JPG of the same quality? Same for the epoch timestamp, Is it just easier to code it like this?

I would assume that anyone wanting the time on the picture would want it in yyyymmddhhmmss, pulled form the camera time, so that it’s local time and the user doesn’t have to add additional calculation(s), and it would be an easy thing to do.

I think the Epoch time is GMT (but running through converters for several photos, but it doesn’t match the time on the actual picture)

8

I’m sorry, I don’t have that level of information. But I’ll bring up this feedback with the team!

9

The PNG format is probably less expensive for Wyze to license than the JPEG format. Or possibly the compiling software had a similar situation.

10

Both JPEG 2000 and PNG are open formats and available for use without licensing fees. A number of utilities can convert between the two.

JPEG is a “lossy” format. This can result in pixelation and image loss with high contrast images. It is an improvement over the GIF format but doesn’t support transparency. Most cameras and phones will export images as JPEG because of its EXIF and metadata support. It has wide implementation in software used in many industries.

PNG is a “lossless” format developed for the web. Its lossless format creates smoother transitions in images but results in a larger file size when used for photographic images. PNG was developed when Compuserve started requiring licenses for their GIF format. After that patent expired, GIF rose in popularity again but is limited in color.

11

Would be great to hear from Wyze devs on this topic!

12

Can we have the option in the app to be able to save the snapshot with the current local timestamp where the camera is located.

Right now the naming convention is in some Linux format, where it does not even translate to the time that is on the camera. It would be nice to have the time in a format that it recognizable like yyyy.mm.dd.hh.mm.ss.MAC/CameraNAme.

I put the MAC there because I can see an issue if someone someone took a snap from multiple cameras at once. It could also just append the camera name too.

Thank you

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13

I would also add to this wishlist that the photos be saved consistently in jpg format. The png images that I and some others get are much larger than necessary.