Odd Wildcard Matching in Windows 10

I recently ran into an odd behavior of more files matching a pattern than I expected. I’d used exiftool to modify the dates on files my GoPro produced. It creates backup files of the original images when it modifies the tags. Here’s the command I ran.

exiftool.exe -r "-AllDates+=4:7:6 17:40:00" -ext jpg f:\GoPro\20170807

Now I had about 4000 files with the .JPG extension and another 4000 files with a .JPG_original extension.

I ran my program that parses the directory structure and turns all those images into a time lapse movie, and it seemed to be including both the file extensions, making a very disjointed movie.

I loaded my source code in the debugger and it seemed to be doing a findfirst / findnext specifically looking for .JPG files, and not some other extension, but it was definitely retrieving files both with .JPG and .JPG_original extensions.

I then ran a couple of commands at the windows command prompt and was surprised to find the same results there.

dir F:\GoPro\20170807\372GOPRO\G*.JPG /p
dir F:\GoPro\20170807\372GOPRO\G???????.JPG /p

Each command returned both the JPG and JPG_original files.

dir F:\GoPro\20170807\372GOPRO\G*.JPG_original /p

returned just the JPG_original files.

dir F:\GoPro\20170807\372GOPRO\G??????.JPG /p

had one less question mark and correctly returned no files.

This is all unexpected behavior, though I’m glad to see that it was consistent with the operating system and not something specific to the C runtime. I’d love an explanation of what’s going on.

exiftool to manage DJI media files

DJI Drones don’t seem to remember the image count between formats of a media card. This creates a problem for me when I’m trying to backup and maintain my images and video.

Because the dates are all correct in the media files, retrieved from GPS data, organizing the files by naming them based on the date works for me.

Using ExifTool by Phil Harvey is a great solution for pulling the metadata from the files and renaming the files.

The command line that I was initially using is:

exiftool "-FileName<${CreateDate}.$filetype" -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S%%-c -ext mp4 -ext dng -ext jpg dji*

It’s problem is that it orphans the SRT subtitle files from my videos that I’d like to keep matching the video files.

I’ve tried this variation to do it in one step but it doesn’t work, because the SRT files get renamed as MP4 files.

exiftool -verbose "-FileName<${CreateDate}" -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S%%-c.%%le -ext mp4 -ext dng -ext jpg dji* -srcfile %f.srt

If anyone has a suggestion for how to rename all the media files in one directory I’d appreciate it. Even running two commands in sequence would be fine.

Update:

I’ve figured out that running these two commands in sequence will get me the results I am looking for:

exiftool "-FileName<${CreateDate}" -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S%%-c.srt -ext mp4 -srcfile %f.srt dji*
exiftool "-FileName<${CreateDate}" -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S%%-c.%%le -ext mp4 -ext dng -ext jpg dji*

I’m still looking for a way of doing it in a single command that may leave less room for error, but this is working for now.