ACDSee Pro 2 and 2.5

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Time reported by ACDSee is one hour off (early)

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  • fgagnon
    Member

    My ACDSee Pro 2.5 reports the EXIF times as being an hour earlier than than the times pictures were taken.

    I have independently verified that the times are correctly encoded by my cameras and verified by camera browser software and other EXIF data reader software.  The issue appears for all pictures I have taken, and goes back a number of years to previous versions of ACDSee.

    Have others seen this?

    Is there a known solution?

    It really only became noticeable when I started using other software and viewers. Before that I had trusted that ACDSee had it right, and thought I had mis-set my cameras to Daylight time, or Standard time and hadn't switched back. But now I see that ACDSee has it consistently wrong.  :(  

    Thanks for any insight into the problem -- especially if it's something I'm doing or a setting I've missed.

    -Fred-

    PS - I didn't mention filetypes. The problem is the same for both .JPG and .CR2 (Canon RAW) files.  Curiously, when I checked a .TIF file, ACDSee reports the correct times. 

    To be clear, In all cases I am speaking of EXIF "Date/time original" and "Date/time digitized" fields.

    -fg-

    Posted On November 3, 2008 - 03:37 AM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Chippy
    Moderator

    Hi fg,

    This could be another "bug" that has been mentioned before.It has been discussed with the developers in the moderators forum, and I am still getting the same one hour off-set, when downloading from a card, and having a DNG file created .

    I will put a link to your post in the mod forum, and see what others, if anything ,have to say.

    Posted On November 3, 2008 - 04:35 AM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • moongate
    Moderator

    Hello Fred,

    at the moment we moderators are investigating a problem were a ACDsee shows a wrong Exif time when XMP info exist in that file that include timezone information.

    This mean ACDsee did no harm to your files and after a fix everything will be in line again. At the moment there is simply something mixed up meaning ACDsee applies the timezone value from XMP to your Exifdate which results in an incorrect display.

    This is usually not the case with file directly out of the camera bucause they don't have those XMP data yet. The XMP data is created when you i.e. work with your files on Photoshop Elements. Since XMP was invented by Adobe they like to add this data to the file.

    At the moment we are trying to find out if the Adobe DNG converter is doing the same thing for DNG converted raw files.

    Can you tell if you altered those files that show up incorrectly with other applications before or is this also the case with files right off the camera "also when just using the ACDsee importer"?

    If so what Camera maker/model are you using. Could you provide a sample file?

    Moongate

    Posted On November 3, 2008 - 09:08 AM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    This started with Pro 2.0 when EXIF info started being recorded in XMP format.  The XMP standard for EXIF suggests (requires?) included time zone information along with the time.  So when an application writes EXIF information to XMP, it appends the current time zone offset to all times.  Applications that write EXIF info to XMP incude ACDSee and pretty much all Adobe products, and they all append this time zone offset.

    When ACDSee goes to display those times later, it compares the current time zone offset with the one recorded in the file, and if they differ, it adjusts the displayed time accordingly.  So why the one hour discrepancy that started showing up in the last couple of days?  Daylight savings time!  Two nights ago everyone's computers updated their time zone offset info to account for DST ending, meaning the computer is now one hour off where it was last week.  So any pictures taken during DST will now display an hour differently.

    I personally think ACDSee shouldn't do this - it should simply display the time as the time it was originally recorded, not paying attention to time zone at all.  But now that I understand what is going on, I don't worry about it much.  It's a minor annoyance, but I know nothing is really being harmed.

     

    Posted On November 3, 2008 - 04:48 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • fgagnon
    Member

    moongate,

    Thanks for the response.

    1.  Whether xmp exists or not makes no difference for my cases.  .JPGs by themselves (no associated RAW files nor .XMP files) have correct embedded times reported by independent EXIF column handlers. 

    2. For the RAW file associated .XMP files created by the Adobe PhotoShop Elements downloader do have the correct local time written, along with the offset hours from GMT.  Perhaps it is similarly included in the .JPG metadata.   Two format examples in XMP files are as follows:

      <exif:DateTimeOriginal>2008-10-05T11:26:16.01-04:00</exif:DateTimeOriginal>

      <exif:DateTimeOriginal>2008-11-02T12:51:08.00-05:00</exif:DateTimeOriginal>

        I note the offset correctly changes for DST or Standard time.

    3. Your mention of Adobe product brings up a point I had not considered.  Mostly I import files from my camera cards nowadays using the Adobe PhotoShop downloader.  Until a year ago I had always used direct copy using Windows Explorer or equivalent.  I will try different methods from 3 or 4 different cameras and report any differences.  

    An initial check with photo just taken with Canon Powershot A540 show ACDSee Pro 2.5 correctly displays Time of .JPG image file whether copied via Win.Explorer or downloaded with Adobe Elements PhotoDownloader.  I will be busy most of the rest of today, but will check and report later on files from other cameras [40D, A590IS, FZ20].  At the moment, I am wondering how much of the confusion is related to just coming off DST?  (I suspect some but not all of it.)

     ------

    Marc,

    @ I personally think ACDSee shouldn't do this - it should simply display the time as the time it was originally recorded, not paying attention to time zone at all. 

    I agree - especially because neither Adobe nor ACDSee knows the time zone in which the picture was taken.  Confusing for travelers when importing pics onto 'home' computer when camera has been all over the world, continually adjusting for local time.

    @ I don't worry about it much.  It's a minor annoyance, but I know nothing is really being harmed.

    Nor do I worry about it.  I'm just trying to understand what is happening here.  It appears to be at least a case of the various app's trying to be be smarter than they are. 

    [edit/add:] Not only is the issue for camera travel across time zones, but also for editing images after DST/STD time changes, & probably moving the 'home' computer across time zones too.  For this to work, it seems there needs to be a way for the camera to know both its time zone and GMT, and for the 'home computer do do likewise.  With the processing app giving the user choices of displaying local time picture taken and GMT picture taken with offset. [/edit]

    to be continued, no doubt ...

     

    Posted On November 3, 2008 - 05:59 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Sam Dring
    Moderator

    Marc S recently referenced the Metadata working groups findings which, inter alia, give:

    The photograph's time zone MUST NOT be presumed to be the same as that of a computer later used to process the photograph

    Good news for the future

    Posted On November 3, 2008 - 08:04 PM (1 year ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • pboerman
    Member

    My ACDSee Pro 2.5 reports the EXIF times as being an hour earlier than than the times pictures were taken. I have independently verified that the times are correctly encoded by my cameras and verified by UltraEdit. However this ONLY occurs to my pictures which have GPS exif data added by Geosetter, all other pictures reports the time correctly.

    For example: all times internally recorded (checked by UltraEdit)  at 11:36:48 are reported by ACDSee  11:36:48. This is the correct DST time I took the picture. So far no problem. After added GPS data to this same picture all times internally recorded are stil 11:36:48 except the time in the GPS section: 09:36:48Z. This is still correct (mid europe summertime GMT + 2). However ACDSee now reports 10:36:48, an hour earlier the picture was taken.

     

     

    Posted On April 14, 2009 - 10:23 PM (7 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    pboerman said:

    My ACDSee Pro 2.5 reports the EXIF times as being an hour earlier than than the times pictures were taken. I have independently verified that the times are correctly encoded by my cameras and verified by UltraEdit. However this ONLY occurs to my pictures which have GPS exif data added by Geosetter, all other pictures reports the time correctly.

    Yep, that would seem to be exactly the issue reported here.  The process of adding GPS data causes an XMP block to be created, which causes time zone info to be added to the timestamp, which causes display of that timestamp to change by an hour when daylight savings time cuts in and out.  We're still hoping a future update to ACDSee will stop trying to "correct" the timestamp display for the differenc in timezone, or at leats give us the option to control that behavior.  Doesn't look like it's happening for 2.5, but I'm still pushing to see in in 3.0...

     

    Posted On April 15, 2009 - 03:23 AM (7 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Falstaff
    Member

    This issue is important to me as I often use several cameras and want to process the images in the order taken, i.e. sorted by the EXIF:DateTimeOriginal field, not by file name or file date/time. The time being off by an hour makes this impossible.

    My analysis of the problem for my case shows that indeed Photoshop adds the XMP:DateTimeOriginal and XMP:DateTimeDigitized info to the image file with the timezone modified with daylight savings time taken into account. I'm in the Pacific timezone (GMT-08:00) so with DST active (as it is right now) these times are suffixed with -07:00 by Adobe.  When I turn DST off on my computer, Photoshop uses -08:00. ACDSee interprets the data without regard to DST, so it sees -07:00 as being in the Mountain timezone and adjusts the time to my zone by subtracting an hour. This is clearly a case of data being written with one interpretation and read with another! At first glance it seems wrong for Adobe to encode DST info into the timezone and expect to decode it properly later when DST changes. ACDSee is wrong to not coexist properly with the world's premier imaging product and to try to interpret EXIF data based on XMP data.

    The simplest workaround I have is to use a tool, such as ExifTool, to remove the XMP tags that lead ACDSee astray; for example:

    exiftool -XMP:DateTimeDigitized= -XMP:DateTimeOriginal= <image>.jpg

    Posted On September 28, 2009 - 03:27 AM (1 month ago) (Permalink to this post)

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