1) I have put quotes around the owner name and the file names so this same syntax will work if the names contain spaces.
2) Without the "-r" option, the 2nd example only modifies files in the "Pictures" directory, but not any sub-directories.
3) These examples assume that you have successfully installed ExifTool. If not, all you need to do is download and expand the ExifTool distribution, then replace "exiftool" with "~/Desktop/Image-ExifTool-5.46/exiftool" in the commands above (assuming that you downloaded verision 5.46 to your Desktop).
4) Make sure you are using version 5.46 or later, since this version fixes a bug in the CRW writing code.
Try using the exiftool "-P" option which preserves the Unix system times for the file. It may help, but I'm not sure how this relates to the time reported by Better Finder Attributes.
ABFA is indeed reading the timestamp from the EXIF information in the CRW file. However, the problem is that ABFA does not understand the CRW format, and is assuming the timestamp is at a fixed location in the file, which is a bad assumption since this location may easily change with different camera models, different firmware, or if the file is edited in any way (as you have discovered).
In my test 10D CRW file, the timestamp is originally at location 0x4d53c8, but after writing the OwnerName tag the location changes to 0x4d53e4. I verified that the Canon FVU software reads the new file correctly including this timestamp. However, ABFA attempts to read the timestamp from offset 0x4d53c8 in the new file and gets the wrong value. (The 4 byes at this location happen to be "00 c0 00 00", which corresponds to the date "1970:01:01 00:51:12".)
This really should be considered a bug in ABFA, and should be reported to them. ABFA should be accessing the date in the CRW file via the embedded CIFF directory structure rather than assuming a fixed location. If their programmers need help understanding the CRW format, you can point them to the following document I have available: http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/canon_raw.html
The good news is that you don't need ABFA to set the file time from the EXIF information because ExifTool will can do this for you:To fix the dates on all files in a directory, just replace the file name ("image.crw" in this example) with the directory name. You can also add a "-r" option to also fix files in all subdirectories of this directory.
Through our interaction, I have realized a couple of improvements that I could make to ExifTool, and have implemented them in version 5.51 which is now available from my web site (click here to download). This version speeds things up by not rewriting the file if you are just changing the timestamp, and allows a simplification of the command line syntax when redirecting information within a file by assuming "-TagsFromFile @" if not specified.
So with version 5.51 (or later), the following will also work:Thanks for pointing this out, and let me know if you have any other problems.
I'm a graphics programmer from way back, and have written many GUI-based programs on Mac, Windows, and Unix systems. I've tried to imagine what sort of GUI I could write for ExifTool which would give you all the power of the command line version, and honestly I don't think it is possible without making the GUI incredibly complex which sort of defeats the purpose. There are just so many things that ExifTool can do. Other people have written drag-and-drop utilities for OS X based on ExifTool, which may be the way to go. These provide a simple interface and only perform a simple function, but can be very convenient for commonly performed tasks.
I'm glad to hear you don't have problems with ABFA and the dates in CR2 files. But if you did, I would be worried because CR2 files are based on the TIFF format, which is well documented (unlike CRW files which are based on the not-so-well-documented CIFF format).
