Platform(s): Website
URLs: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/edit/batch
Description of need:
Photos often have incorrect time annotations due to technical errors or mistakes. E.g. I am currently uploading old photos from my phone and noticed that my already-uploaded DSLR photos from the same day are all an hour off; I must have forgotten to adjust its settings after a Daylight Savings Time change. This happens to me every year but I doubt I’ll change them if I have to edit each observation one at a time, and they’re only 1 hour off.
Similar issue here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-to-batch-correct-times-on-observations-for-incorrect-clock/10010
Feature request details:
Add a menu option to add or subtract a certain amount of hours from the times of all selected images.
I imagine it being under the date/timezone options:
Here is an example menu from GeoSetter of what it might look like:
I could also imagine just a textbox that allows a format like -1:00 hours.
(I know this was a part of this closed request, but that request involved a bunch of other changes so I figured just this part was worth a shot.)
I would certainly like this feature, These days I (usually) do remember but in the past I have frequently forgotten to change the time on my camera. Leaving from Australia this means that many of my images are time stamped for the middle of the night! I usually put a comment “Time stamp -10 hrs” but it would be useful to be able to actually correct the time.
2 Likes
This would be very helpful. I’m banging my head against the absence of this feature at the moment. I’ve uploaded about 200 observations from a trip overseas and just noticed that all the observation times on iNat are 22 hours off from the date-time stamps on my photos, because my iNat account time zone is different from where the photos were taken. In the past, I’d change the time zone drop down in the Batch Edit, like in your screenshot, but it’s not showing up for me anymore. Not sure why.
If I could just do what you’ve suggested here, it would have all been fixed in a moment. Instead, now I’m staring down the barrel of an hour or two of manually editing the time on each observation, when I’d rather spend that time uploading more observations.
(I’ve been tempted to delete all the observations, change my account time zone, and reupload them all, but that would wipe out all the IDs and comments iNat users have already made on them.)
Did you check update of uploader? All timezones are added based on location.
1 Like
Thanks. I’m still trying to get my head around how the new uploader handles time zones. I’m so far finding it awkward to make work properly (perhaps I’m just not understanding what it’s doing). I added a post about it later in the day, asking for suggestions on how others are using it across time zones: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/web-bulk-uploading-from-another-time-zone/31308
So far I see the feature suggestion by @upupa-epops as a useful addition for dealing with this, as well as issues like where I’ve forgotten to switch daylight savings on in my DSLR and realised only after adding a bunch of photos to iNat.
