Google Photos transfer doesn't copy "Date Taken" or "Description" meta-data

ghaing

I have just tested the copy of a Google Photos album from one account to a second, it copied the the album with the correct name and the contained images, but the Description wasn't copied and the Date/Time of the image in Google, essentially the date taken and where it appears in the main stream of photos, used today's date (the date of transfer) and not the date of the original images.

ghaing

I haven't yet checked to see if Geo data is, or isn't, transferred in this way also?

ghaing

I have just test copied a second album.
SOME time stamps are the date taken, but others are still set to the time and date of transfer (today/now).
Geo-location data is not being copied.
Descriptions are not being copied.

Admin

Hello Ghaing,
The API of Google Photos doesn't offer the feature to save the original data, description, and Geo-location. So, MultCloud can't transfer these properties of photos.

ghaing

Hi Admin, thanks for your response. Can you be more specific when you say "original data"? The image itself is original data for instance.

I have been looking at the Google Photos API documentation and there is a description attribute.

I see there is no option at all for Geo location which is very upsettings.

This doesn't explain why, when copying over just a single Album, the dates are a mish-mash of correct and incorrect. Some being the date taken, some just 1 day later, and others being the date/time of the migration using MultCloud?

Admin

@Ghaing, Sorry that it is "original date". 
Generally, when you transfer from Google Photos to another, it will not retain the original date. The date will be the date/time of transfer.  Are there some same photos in the source and destination before you run the transfer? For the same photos, MultCloud will skip them to transfer.

ghaing

While there may be some images that are in both locations, these are not. The images/albums I am first testing with are strictly only in the source. Furthermore, even if they were in the destination, which they're not, their date would not be "today's date" when they were taken way back in September.

Additionally, I have made sure to pick an album where all images were taken on the same device (mobile) uploaded to Google Photos (source) with the same method (Google Photos mobile app) and their date had not been altered since being on Google Photos. Unless there is something I have missed, this indicates there is definitely something wrong with the MultCloud migration that has taken place?

Admin

@Ghaing, Could you try to delete the album you copy to the target Google Photos and then transfer it again? Please use the "Cloud Transfer" feature to create a transfer task to select an album of the source Google Photos to the target Google Photos. Then, please check if the date of the transferred photos is changed to the transfer time.
We test that it is no problem in our google photos.

wwcanoer

I just tried MultiCloud Free to Sync GooglePhotos to OneDrive and found that the date is not maintained.  That's sad.   I was about to buy it for a month to transfer everything but now need to try others.  

[picbackman says "Keep meta data of Photos intact during migration (*)" but what does that star mean? There is no legend. So I don't know if others can maintain the date and metadata or not.]

Admin

@Wwcanoer, The API of Google Photos and OneDrive doesn't offer the feature to maintain the date and metadata. So, MultCloud can't transfer the date and metadata of photos.

smallhillcz

@Admin When you view your Google Photos in MultCloud, there is a correct date present, so apparently MultCloud indeed DOES have the access to the date taken, but just doesn't sync it.

@Wwcanoer do you know of any other service, which would be able to sync including the dates?

sbig

The solution is https://metadatafixer.com/. But it requires that you -don't- use Multcloud, and use Google Takeout > download your Google Photos to your computer > run Metadata Fixer > Upload all the files to iCloud.

Absolutely frustrating that Google does not allow this information to be copied on export.

Also very frustrating that I just bought 1 years worth of Multcloud to transfer my photos from Google Photos to iCloud Photos and it cannot be done correctly. Metadata is so critical when transferring large amounts of media; it goes without saying.

@ Admins here - please report this back to your product team. It should be mentioned clearly somewhere that this will occur, if it's a known issue.

Hope this helps others from making the same mistake as me

troyzergod143

So there’s no possible way to transfer photos from Google photos to iCloud without losing meta data location data etc and for Sbig that website do I need a windows computer to successfully merge all meta data like every last type or can I do it on my iPhone if there’s no other way from MultCloud does anyone know of any other applications that allow Google photos to iCloud with meta data intact and I mean every last piece of data in tact I’m running iPhone 8 IPS 16.7.5 I believe I get this weird error when I tried transferring from Google photos to iCloud when I click the 3 dots on the right side and hit view failed files I get this “google db access disabled for this account” how can I enable db access on my Google account cause that’s the problem I run into pls any help would make my whole world allot better cause I have over 800+ Google photos and I am being forced to download 200 photos at a time and even after it’s done manually I only have like 600+ photos on my iCloud I don’t know what’s going on here but that private db access being disabled is making this hell somebody help or maybe direct me to a similar app

Admin

@Troyzergod143, The API of iCloud doesn't offer the feature to save the meta data of pictures. So, MultCloud can't transfer the metadata.

troyzergod143

Why not I manually downloaded 200 photos at a time and I’m pretty sure they were all intact including Meta data the only reason I am trying this after deleting all my iCloud Photos is because when I do it manually there’s like 200 photos missing is there any work way around this like a Google setting or a iPhone app that takes a google takeout of you’re google photos and recombined the meta and any other data like date taken modified location and still be original quality?

Admin

@Troyzergod143, This is the limit of API of iCloud. MultCloud need to access and download data via the API.So, MultCloud can't skip the restriction.

ggatto

Losing the location is so bad.

It looks like the date/time and some other meta-data (like camera, ISO, etc.) are being transferred, but the location is not.

@Admin do you think that could be some wrong setting on my side?

Maybe something changed on the iCloud and Google Photo APIs?

P.S. I am transferring from Google Photos to iCloud.

Admin

@Ggatto, The API of iCloud doesn't allow to save the location information.