R5/R5 photo filename upper limit?

Mar 25, 2011
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Until the exif standard is changed, camera makers must follow it. All of those that meet the standard have the same issue.

I don't think they want to change the standard, the software implications for 10's of thousands of pieces of software are not understood so they don't want to cause a big issue.
 
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Until the exif standard is changed, camera makers must follow it. All of those that meet the standard have the same issue.

I don't think they want to change the standard, the software implications for 10's of thousands of pieces of software are not understood so they don't want to cause a big issue.

Thanks! Didn't realize it was an industry-wide issue.
 
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Mar 26, 2014
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Until the exif standard is changed, camera makers must follow it. All of those that meet the standard have the same issue.

I don't think they want to change the standard, the software implications for 10's of thousands of pieces of software are not understood so they don't want to cause a big issue.

Could you, please, give a scenario in which a change would cause some software to break?
 
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Joules

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Could you, please, give a scenario in which a change would cause some software to break?
If this is indeed part of a standard, then obviously designers would make assumptions about the limits of what they have to work with based on the standard. If you go outside of spec for a standard, that does not mean you'll necessarily get issues. But if you do, you have noone but yourself to blame, as the standard sets the limits on what has to be supported by others.

If you need a specific issue, take the simplest one there is in dealing with numbers in computers: overflow. Larger numbers need more space in memory (they occupie more 1s and 0s). Particularly on mobile devices, memory is to be used sparingly, so you may well find software with variables that can only hold numbers slightly larger than 9999. 16 bit Integer is a common format and can only go up to 65,535, if you go beyond that you get overflow. So 9,999 fits, but 99,999 would not.
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Could you, please, give a scenario in which a change would cause some software to break?
As I said, I don't think its possible to know what programmers of literally tens of thousands of pieces of software and firmware have in their software that has a similar limit. The committee that produces the exif standard obviously does not consider it a issue. Users of software like Adobe Lightroom have developed workflows that rename and renumber files, so the issue has a workaround.

It can be a pain to those who have high frame rate cameras, and with the R5 /R6 and 20 FPS, the odds of the number rolling over in a given session have increased.

Camera manufacturers surely have representation on the exif committee as well as scanner manufacturers, smart phone manufacturers, but the smaller companies that make specialized devices that use exif don't. I doubt that any of the many makers of dash cams are represented, for example. Same with wildlife cameras, there are tons of surveillance cameras and machine cameras, the list must be very long. The impact of changing the standard would be very costly at the least.
 
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Mar 26, 2014
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Camera manufacturers surely have representation on the exif committee as well as scanner manufacturers, smart phone manufacturers, but the smaller companies that make specialized devices that use exif don't. I doubt that any of the many makers of dash cams are represented, for example. Same with wildlife cameras, there are tons of surveillance cameras and machine cameras, the list must be very long. The impact of changing the standard would be very costly at the least.

Those are examples of devices that create & name the files. Those wouldn't break if the standard is changed. Question is whether there are any devices that read the files and depend on the cameras to adhere to it.
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Those are examples of devices that create & name the files. Those wouldn't break if the standard is changed. Question is whether there are any devices that read the files and depend on the cameras to adhere to it.
Yes, they would have to comply with a new standard. They would spend a ton of money to redesign software, and possibly equipment, and customers that acquired the images in their workflows could also be affected.
 
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Mar 26, 2014
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Yes, they would have to comply with a new standard. They would spend a ton of money to redesign software, and possibly equipment, and customers that acquired the images in their workflows could also be affected.

Except on the reader side the standard is FAT32 / exFAT. This means as much time and money as required to mark the task as "closed without any code changes".
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Except on the reader side the standard is FAT32 / exFAT. This means as much time and money as required to mark the task as "closed without any code changes".
Fat and exFat have nothing to do with the exif file naming convention. They do not format cards either, commands are sent from the computer to format a card. A card reader is a interface device.
 
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Mar 26, 2014
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Fat and exFat have nothing to do with the exif file naming convention.

Exactly.

Applications like Lightroom, DPP, and DxO can read images from any FAT32, exFAT, or NTFS volume, even if the file names do not adhere to the EXIF file naming convention. If a memory card is exFAT formatted, why would those applications care if the images on it were saved adhering to the EXIF file naming convention or not?
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Exactly.

Applications like Lightroom, DPP, and DxO can read images from any FAT32, exFAT, or NTFS volume, even if the file names do not adhere to the EXIF file naming convention. If a memory card is exFAT formatted, why would those applications care if the images on it were saved adhering to the EXIF file naming convention or not?
Who said they did?


I was a Standards engineer for a large company and have worked on several national and international specification committees and know how they operate. I also managed employees on some of those committees and had to fight to get budget allocated.

Committee members have learned by hard experience that they can cause a mess by tinkering when they do not understand the implications. They are usually not full time specification writers, its just a part of their job. Those that think its simple and easy to make a change without first understanding implications, have it explained to them that they need to bring a analysis that is complete and researched for proposed spec changes. In extreme cases if they persist, a committee has been known to ask their company to replace them. The cases where members are full time spec writers are few, they are paid to do it because it returns money for their company. Managing the EXIF Spec does not generate money back to the companies who let employees work on it. That makes it a very slow process that is not going to change unless its covering something new or must be fixed. The committees themselves only exist because companies and sometimes governments pay membership dues, they pay because their is a benefit financially.

If you have a dash cam which produces a exif stamp and sends it to a phone app, you do not know for sure how the phone app is internally structured. It is probably not a issue, but you don't know. There are literally 10's of thousands of similar cases. Who is going to pay to investigate them or at least most of them? Who even knows who and where there are users? Its a unknown and unless a committee member produces a comprehensive list and has approvals of the companies involved, the committee does not want to risk the change.

Wishing is not going to change it, there must be a money making or expense avoiding reason before someone would undertake a multi year project like that. Imagine going to your boss and asking him to approve paying you to work on a project to expand exif numbers. He will first ask how it would benefit your company financially.
 
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Who said they did?

If they don't, then the camera can depart from the exif file naming convention without breaking compatibility with those apps. Only questions is what would break.

Committee members have learned by hard experience that they can cause a mess by tinkering when they do not understand the implications.

Nothing instills fear like unknown implications.

If you have a dash cam which produces a exif stamp and sends it to a phone app, you do not know for sure how the phone app is internally structured.

Today's smartphones' file systems are as flexible as PCs.

Imagine going to your boss and asking him to approve paying you to work on a project to expand exif numbers. He will first ask how it would benefit your company financially.

True for every feature, and probably the real reason the standard isn't going to change: there aren't enough customers who want the ability to store 10,000 photos on the same card, and there are workarounds for those who do, e.g. create a new folder and reset the counter.
 
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Sharlin

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Can the photo filename on the R5/R6 go above 9999? That's always been one of my pet peeves with Canon cameras to date.

Could you, please, give a scenario in which a change would cause some software to break?

Fat and exFat have nothing to do with the exif file naming convention.

The FAT32 file system, being backward compatible all the way down to the original DOS FAT-12 from 1980, literally only supports DOS-compatible 8.3 format file names in its basic form. That is, at most eight characters plus a three-character file extension.

Long filename support, introduced in FAT32 in 1996, is a really dirty hack, utilizing obscure and hidden "sidecar" directory entries associated with each long-filename file and storing the actual long filename. But the "real" filename, as far as FAT is concerned, is the 8.3 name. It is clear, then, why the EXIF filename convention is ABC_1234.EXT, the filesystem couldn't handle longer names! Not without forcing everybody to implement the extremely hack long-filename extension.
 
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Sharlin

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If they don't, then the camera can depart from the exif file naming convention without breaking compatibility with those apps. Only questions is what would break.

Any program or library that actually follows the standard and expects filenames to be in the specified format. It is beyond 100% certain that there exists code that only considers filenames that end with exactly four digits. The fact that all the biggest players can handle more variety in filenames is not a good reason to break compatibility with a standard.
 
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