Video from IPhone?

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dthor68
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Joined: July 26th, 2010, 1:26 pm
Location: South Carolina
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Video from IPhone?

Post by dthor68 »

I am wanting to upload a video from my IPhone to Facebook. I know when you take photos with an iphone it contains GPS info, coordinates of where the photo was taken. This is info that I never want to share, especially with rare animals. Do the videos contain that same info? If so, how can I delete that info?

Thanks,
Derek
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technoendo
Posts: 112
Joined: December 13th, 2014, 5:27 pm

Re: Video from IPhone?

Post by technoendo »

> I am wanting to upload a video from my IPhone to Facebook. I know when you take photos with an iphone it contains GPS info, coordinates of where the photo was taken. This is info that I never want to share, especially with rare animals. Do the videos contain that same info? If so, how can I delete that info?

Hi Derek! I might be able to help on this. I also carry an IPhone and I just checked a video file shot with the default camera app and can confirm it did have GPS coordinates in the EXIF metadata headers in the .mov video container.

I haven't used this utility, but here is one for the PC/MAC for scrubbing these headers:

http://www.exifpurge.com/

A google search also turned up the article below, which describes 3 solutions:

1) Windows 10 has a built in method for stripping specific metadata from a file so you can do this without installing any additional software 2) an alternative of using a free software image editor to re-save an image without transferring metadata from the original image and 3) also, it mentions a mobile app for both Android and IOS for viewing/purging EXIF headers.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-ways-to ... t-want-to/

My preferred solution is a command line utility available on Windows/MacOS/Linux called "exiftool".

https://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Here is a command to strip all metadata:

Code: Select all

exiftool -all= foo.jpg
Lets list the gps lat/long of one iphone video here:

Code: Select all

$ exiftool -gpslatitude -gpslongitutde IMG_4333.MOV
GPS Latitude                    : 49 deg 29' 25.09" N
The 'grep' command exists on Linux/MacOS, but I run Windows 10 and have installed the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). This gets me a bash shell and common GNU/Linux command line utilities natively built for Windows. Instead of caring about whether you have grep or not you can just run the first part of the command before the "|" to get ALL output, copy that into any text editor, and search through it that way if you want to browse all the headers yourself.

Code: Select all

$ exiftool IMG_4333.MOV | grep -i gps
GPS Coordinates                 : 49 deg 29' 25.09" N, 117 deg 34' 13.99" W, 1652 m Above Sea Level
GPS Altitude                    : 1652 m
GPS Altitude Ref                : Above Sea Level
GPS Latitude                    : 49 deg 29' 25.09" N
GPS Longitude                   : 117 deg 34' 13.99" W
GPS Position                    : 49 deg 29' 25.09" N, 117 deg 34' 13.99" W
So here is how to use exiftool to strip all metadata and demonstrate there is no gps location information.

Code: Select all

$ exiftool -all= IMG_4333.MOV
    1 image files updated
$ exiftool IMG_4333.MOV | grep -i gps
$ exiftool -gpslatitude -gpslongitutde IMG_4333.MOV
$
Also, if you shoot video on an IPhone, I'll just mention the alternative application Filmic Pro which has a lot of features the default IPhone camera doesn't have (manual white balance, locking orientation, false color, zebras, focus peaking, better focus/exposure controls with better manual controls for aperture/shutterspeed, support for frame rates and aspect ratios unsupported by the base camera app, as well as being able to shoot in multiple color profiles with higher bitrates). FilmicPro either doesn't capture GPS coordinates on videos, or its configurable and I have it turned off. Unfortunately, FilmicPro does cost money... think its like $20.

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