Issues with .MOV files created on iOS18 devices

Whilst developing code to add/edit tags and usercomments to files so that they can be indexed by Everything 1.5's support for 'properties' I noticed that some .MOV files (ex iPhone) could be successfully tagged by Opus but the tags were not being found by Everything and were not visible in the Windows Properties dialog. After noting that only recent .MOV files were affected and following discussion on the Everything 1.5 Alpha Forum the issue has been pinned down to a change in iOS18. Pre iOS18 videos are not affected.

Another issue with iOS18 videos is that thumbnails are not visible. This turns out to be due to the same change. Both issues can easily be fixed using a recent version of exiftool (at least v13.09) with the caveat that the 'fix' removes any tags, usercomments and ratings that you might have added with Opus. As long as you don't use the -overwrite_original option there is no risk and any missing metadata can be added back afterwards to the copy created by exiftool.

The relevant command to remove the problem is:

exiftool -m -P -Keys:FullFrameRatePlaybackIntent= iOS18.mov

..where you would substitute your filename in place of iOS18.mov in this example. This will create a fixed copy of your original video.

Video thumbnails aren’t extracted by Opus itself. They come through the Windows shell, which in turn uses the video codecs and demuxers installed on your system.

The Properties Dialog is also part of Windows, not anything to do with Opus.

Assuming you see the same issue in File Explorer, it means the best thing to do is look for solutions that work in File Explorer (e.g. updated or alternative codecs that support the newer files). If they fix things there, it should also fix them in Opus and a lot of other things.

This is not an Opus issue but I know that many Opus users apply tags and I expect that an increasing number of Opus users are using Everything 1.5 capabilities to search for tagged files. I posted this in case others encounter the problem.

The fix is as documented above using exiftool. After being applied Windows Properties will "see" all valid metadata subsequently added and Everything will also be able to index properties such as tags associated with repaired .MOV files.