Where is capture time recorded in images from the Snapcam Lite wearable camera?

Question

I am using a wearable bluetooth wifi camera. How do I find the time when a particular picture was taken?

So far I have tried to look at the metadata on the jpg using Exiftool. I am only able to see when the pictures were moved from the micro-SD card to my computer through this.

I know the data of time when the picture was taken is available. Because the camera comes with an android app, and I am able to see the time when picture was taken through the app.

But once I move the picture from the microSD card to my computer, I don't know where to find it again.

Where could this time be hiding?

EDIT:

(The following solution is for a Linux Machine. However for other OS, one can something similar in spirit: SAVE your metadata before moving the images anywhere from the MicroSD)

Using this command before moving the images from MicroSD card: exiftool /path/to/file/filename.JPG | grep Modification

gives the output:

 File Modification Date/Time     : 2017:05:20 01:47:38+05:30

But the actual time of creation in this case was 2017:05:19 20:17:38 which one gets by subtracting the +5:30 for my timezone.

If one moves the file to computer the above data gets permanently over-written. So I have a bash script with which I rename the file with the time of it's creation before moving it anywhere.

Here is the script:

#!/bin/bash

cd "/path/to/file"

for file in *
do 
    out="$(exiftool $file | grep Modification)"
    out=${out:34:19}
    out=${out/":"/"-"}
    out=${out/":"/"-"}
    out=$(date -d "$out")
    out=$(date -d "$out -330 minutes" +'%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S')
       # Replace -330 with offset needed for your timezone
    if [[ $file == *.jpg ]]
    then
        mv "$file" "${out}.JPG"
    fi
    if [[ $file == *.MP4 ]]
    then
        mv "$file" "${out}.MP4"
    fi
done

I am happy with this for now.

Answer 1

I'd suggest saving the timestamp directly into the file metadata. You can do this and rename an entire directory with a single exiftool command.

Try this:
exiftool -globalTimeShift -5:30 -d '%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S.%%e' '-ModifyDate<FileModifyDate#' '-CreateDate<FileModifyDate#' '-DateTimeOriginal<FileModifyDate#' '-Filename<FileModifyDate' /path/to/Target/Dir

Breakdown:
-globalTimeShift -5:30: Shifts all date/time tags. In this case, subtracts the 5 hours, 30 minutes you need to shift by.
-d '%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S.%%e': Reformats all date tags into the format you want to use to rename your file.
'-ModifyDate<FileModifyDate#'…: Copies the FileModifyDate into the three tags listed (DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate, and ModifyDate), shifted as mentioned above. The hashtag tells exiftool to use the tag unmodified by the -d option. Exiftool would have worked fine without it in this case, but if the -d option were different, e.g. you were using US date format, it might be affected and save an incorrect timestamp.
'-Filename<FileModifyDate': Renames the file to your desired format.

You will find this to be much faster than a script, especially in the case of a large amount of files, as exiftool has to startup only once rather than once for every file.

Additional:
Add -r if you want to recurse into subdirectories. Add -overwrite_original to avoid making backup _original files.

Answer 2

(The following solution is for a Linux Machine. However for other OS, one can something similar in spirit: SAVE your metadata before moving the images anywhere from the MicroSD)

Using this command before moving the images from MicroSD card: exiftool /path/to/file/filename.JPG | grep Modification

gives the output:

File Modification Date/Time : 2017:05:20 01:47:38+05:30

But the actual time of creation in this case was 2017:05:19 20:17:38 which one gets by subtracting the +5:30 for my timezone.

If one moves the file to computer the above data gets permanently over-written. So I have a bash script with which I rename the file with the time of it's creation before moving it anywhere.

Here is the script:

#!/bin/bash

cd "/path/to/file"

for file in *
do 
    out="$(exiftool $file | grep Modification)"
    out=${out:34:19}
    out=${out/":"/"-"}
    out=${out/":"/"-"}
    out=$(date -d "$out")
    out=$(date -d "$out -330 minutes" +'%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S')
       # Replace -330 with offset needed for your timezone
    if [[ $file == *.jpg ]]
    then
        mv "$file" "${out}.JPG"
    fi
    if [[ $file == *.MP4 ]]
    then
        mv "$file" "${out}.MP4"
    fi
done

I am happy with this for now.