Updating of Keywords and Metadata in iView

[BillRogers]

I hope I'm wrong about this - I will appreciate any advice I receive.

Let's assume you have an image in a folder, and it is cataloged in iView. You want to add a new keyword.

If you add the keyword in iView, it is only saved in the iView catalog - it is not written into the metadata in the original image.

Similarly, if you add the keyword to the original image, for example by using Bridge, then update the catalog in iView the keyword does not show up in iView.

It appears that the only time that the keywords from the original file are written into iView is when the catalog is first created.

I ran some brief tests to confirm the above. I assume it must be true of other metadata as well, for instance "document title" or "description."

In conclusion, it seems that the only way to update the keywords in both the original file and the catalog is to enter them twice. Gee, I hope I'm wrong about this ...

Bill Rogers

[johnbeardy]

Bill

Breathe more easily - you're wrong. Look at iView's Action > Sync. This lets you write metadata back to the original image, and update it for metadata added outside. Experiment with this a little and with a variety of image formats.

I do agree that iView's folder updates don't work as well as they could - Portfolio handles this better. If you update a folder in iView, it only adds new files, while what we really need is that existing files are also updated, with metadata changes being merged with the catalogue's data.

John

[BillRogers]

Thanks so much, John. I'll try it after I get some sleep. Just looked at the clock, and it's a quarter to three. Now I'll be playing the great Johnny Mercer song in my head: "It's a quarter to three, there's no one in the place except you and me ... Make it one for my baby, and one more for the road."

Bill

[AlanDunne]

Bill,

hopefully if I stay up until quater to three I will also be so poetic ...

Anyways, the ability to "sync" annotations between the catalog and the image file was identified by Peter as one of the fundamental "must have" features in a catalog tool. Since IView is on Peter's short list of usable DAM catalog tool, you can be sure that it supports this feature, as was poitned out by John.

Cheers ... Al

[rvestal]

Just a word of caution.  I too have been playing with iVew and trying out the "Sync" comand back to the original RAW file.  I was not able to get sync to work with keywords created in iVew and exported back to Canon RAW files (CR2).  Unfortunately, iView does not support sync to Canon RAWs and this was confirmed in an e-mail from iView support earlier today.  Bummer.

[danaltick]

I actually comment on this problem in this thread http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=122.15.

Here's my quote:

Rick,

I beileve I've discovered what's going on.  This is only a problem with my CR2 RAW files.  The JPEG's sync fine both ways.  I do have to purge the Bridge cache sometimes to get it to update though.

It appears as though iView reads from the RAW sidecar files on import, but doesn't write back to the sidecar files in the same place or maybe not at all.  So this must just be a RAW sidecar issue with iView, which doesn't really matter because iView and Bridge will probably sync fine with DNG's.  And even if it doesn't, once my DNG's are cataloged, I don't intend to do my browsing with the Brdge anyway.

Dan

[rfreschner]

Unfortunately, iView does not support sync to Canon RAWs and this was confirmed in an e-mail from iView support earlier today.  Bummer.

Did they say that they don't sync back to the Bridge sidecar XMP files though?  Most applications won't/can't write to the RAW files, but will write to the sidecar XMP or their own version of it.

[rvestal]

Here's the quote from the e-mail from support (actually it's the entire answer):

"I'm Sorry MediaPro does not Sync annotations back to Canon Raw files, this is something we are interested in and hope we can implement it in a future release of MediaPro."

I didn't specifically ask about the sync back to the XMP sidecar files, but when I export the annotations using "Sync" and then view the image in an IPTC capable program like PS CS2 or BBPro, the keywords that I added in iView are not visible. The RAW files in question are Canon CR2's from either a 1D MarkII or a 1Ds Mark II.

[peterkrogh]

Nikon is now documenting how metadata is written to NEF files.  Canon does nnot, and it is therefore dangerous for third parties to write metadata.
Another argument for DNG.
Peter

[rfreschner]

I'd have to agree with Peter.  There's a lot of upside going with DNG.