Aligned names issue

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

Hello,

I have used Hugin to generate a kind of time-lapse from 91 images. Not a real time-lapse, because the images are not evenly spaced, sometimes they are a few minutes distant, sometimes I have 2 images in one second. After carefully cleaning the control points, I got Hugin to generate me the aligned images using Remapped images: No exposure correction, low dynamic range. So far, so good. 

My problem is that while I started with images named 20250616_224427.jpg, 20250616_224428.jpg, 20250616_224430.jpg and so on, the aligned images were named 20250616_224427 - 20250616_225537_1_exposure_layers_0000.tif, 20250616_224427 - 20250616_225537_1_exposure_layers_0001.tif, 20250616_224427 - 20250616_225537_1_exposure_layers_0002.tif and so on. I have lost the real time info in the name, and the aligned images don't have any EXIF/IPTC data from which I could rename them back to their original names. 

Is there a way to recover the original names?

Frederic Da Vitoria
(davitof)

Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » - http://www.april.org

[Carl von Einem]

Hello Frederic,

as a first step I would have a look at the metadata stored in two of
those problematic files with identical time stamps using ExifTool by
Phil Harvey. If that isn`t already working on your system you can get
instructions for your OS on www.exiftool.org

I can only describe the way to get it running on Mac OS X or Ubuntu (in
my case it is Xubuntu). Or just check out this terminal command to find
out if it is already working on your system:

- check the version number:
exiftool -ver

- or you may want to find out where it is installed:
which exiftool

It works if you get something back like this
carl@carl-MacPro:~$ exiftool -ver
12.76

then just type the command
exiftool
and also add a blank.
Now drag one of the files into the terminal window to include the path
to the file and click on the enter/return button of your keyboard. This
will list all metadata your image file contains.

My Nikon files also include subseconds like here in one of my example files:
Date/Time Original: 2025:04:28 16:00:24.49
and also the original file number:
File Number: 7798

To avoid situations like the one you mentioned I always use an exiftool
renaming command (example below) to process the names of my RAW (NEF)
files. My Nikon typically saves NEF as well as JPG files It uses a
similar structure like your YYYYMMDD_hhmmss but also adds the original
file number that is part of that very simplistic "IMG_1234" naming scheme.

my original file _CVE9170.NEF in folder /home/carl/Bilder/

using this exiftool command (working on Mac as well as on Linux, it
should be one line without a line break)...

exiftool '-FileName<${CreateDate}_$filenumber.%e' -d
cve_%Y%m%d-%H%M%S%%-c /home/carl/Bilder/

... processes all files in folder "Bilder" and results in my above
example file renamed to
cve_20250607-134405_9170.NEF

Does that help?

Cheers,
Carl

Am 23.06.25 um 23:40 schrieb Frederic Da Vitoria:

[Frédéric Da Vitoria]

Hello Carl,

Thank you for your explanations.

On 24/06/2025 18:24, 'Carl von Einem' via hugin and other free panoramic

software wrote:
> Hello Frederic,
>
> as a first step I would have a look at the metadata stored in two of
> those problematic files with identical time stamps using ExifTool by
> Phil Harvey. If that isn`t already working on your system you can get
> instructions for your OS on www.exiftool.org

I had not thought of this, but indeed Hugin usually copies the date &
time info when doing panoramas. I checked with panoramas I assembled a
few days ago, the date & time info are copied. It seems that this does
not work for time lapse.

> I can only describe the way to get it running on Mac OS X or Ubuntu
> (in my case it is Xubuntu). Or just check out this terminal command to
> find out if it is already working on your system:
>
> - check the version number:
> exiftool -ver
>
> - or you may want to find out where it is installed:
> which exiftool
>
> It works if you get something back like this
> carl@carl-MacPro:~$ exiftool -ver
> 12.76

Hugin for Windows contains the perl version of exiftool, but I found the
equivalent command line and got "13.10".

I also use a similar script to rename the original RAW & JPEG files
generated by my camera, so that all my files are named using the
YYYYMMDD_HHmmSS format. I don't remember why I chose exiv2 rather than
exiftool, but my script uses exiv2: exiv2 -t -F [file name]. My problem
is that when generating the time lapse, Hugin renames all the files to
[pto file name]_[sequential number], so that the generated files have
different names from the original files, and that, as I explained above,
Hugin does not copy the date & time info. For my example, the date of
all the pictures was the same, but the time of course changed and I have
no way of recovering it.

[Frédéric Da Vitoria]

I decided to do it by hand. I had a script which allows me to copy the
exif from one file to another. I plugged this script in Total Commander
(a Windows dual pane file manager). I put all the source images in a
folder, all the aligned images in another and selected the first file
from both folders and copied the exif, then selected the second file
from both folders and copied the exif, then ... All in all, because I
sometimes made mistakes when selecting the next files and had to go
back, it took me about half an hour. Once the exif data were correcty
set, renaming the files was easy, of course.

In case Thomas decides to consider this, I believe allowing to transfer
exif to the aligned files, at least as an option, would be an improvement.

[T. Modes]

davi...@gmail.com schrieb am Donnerstag, 26. Juni 2025 um 16:58:56 UTC+2:

In case Thomas decides to consider this, I believe allowing to transfer
exif to the aligned files, at least as an option, would be an improvement.

This can already be done with an user-defined output. see https://groups.google.com/g/hugin-ptx/c/_tTVrEm7HzE/m/B06t7Lz7EgAJ

I'm attaching the executor file for convenience.

Save the file under on Windows under c:\users\<USERNAME>\AppName\Roaming\hugin, on Linux the path is ~/.local/share/hugin

After a restart of Hugin you should find it under Output > User defined output > Aligned images with EXIF data and also in the fast preview window under the arrow of the create button.

Thomas

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

I took a look at normal_layered_tiff.executor. It seems it is supposed to call exiftool to copy part of the exif data. I checked in the tiff files, no exif data there at all. Is there some way to investigate what went wrong?

--

[T. Modes]

davi...@gmail.com schrieb am Donnerstag, 26. Juni 2025 um 21:22:58 UTC+2:

I took a look at normal_layered_tiff.executor. It seems it is supposed to call exiftool to copy part of the exif data. I checked in the tiff files, no exif data there at all. Is there some way to investigate what went wrong?

I tested here. It works fine for me.

Look at the log files (maybe you need to activate them - always save log) or run the hugin_executor from the command line and look at the output.

Either another program running is blocking the access (e.g. indexer, anti-virus), or the program you are using to look at the Exif data is not supporting multilayer TIFFs.

[Frédéric Da Vitoria]

Hello Thomas.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have looked at the normal_layered_tiff.executor. I often use it (actually, I often use "Normal panorama with layered TIFF output"), and it indeed works as expected.

My issue here wasn't with an executor (at least I don't think so), but with the "No exposure correction, low dynamic range" check box. I don't even know if this is supposed to copy exif data to the result files, so that maybe there is no bug, but merely a possible improvement.