Meta Description for Images not displaying in Result

[cyndiee]

I have been adding meta descriptions and titles to a bunch of images using the same application (Microsoft Pro-Photo Tools) and then indexing the images to create a search of just images. The search works fine except some of the images that have meta description data are only displaying (M) M in the result instead of the description, yet others are displaying fine. It displays the title on the ones with (M) M, so I know it sees the meta data for that image and I've double-checked to make sure that the description is there. Any ideas of why that might be happening? I tried increasing the Max Description Length, thinking maybe it skipped it instead of truncating it if it was too long, but that didn't work.

Thanks!

[wrensoft]

Can you post the URL to one of these bad images so that we can inspect the meta data and attempt to reproduce the problem here. What version of Zoom are you using on what O/S?

[cyndiee]

I'm using version 5.1 build 1016 on XP. I have to use the ASP search because I have not been able to get the cgi search to work on my hosting plan. They only seem to support Perl scrpts.

This is for a genealogical site (hence the tombstone images) :).

Here is the search. http://www.delcogenweb.org/search/chesterts/search.asp

Enter the word bartholomew for the search and it will give you a good example. These images were all take by the same person with the same camera and I used the same application to add the meta data to all of them, but only some of them display the description. They all display the title fine though.

Thanks for your help!!

[wrensoft]

It might be a software bug. We'll need to look more closely into it.

[cyndiee]

Okay. Here's the link to the Pro Photo Tools (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3acbe51c-9d63-48ff-9614-5f30d76061b4&DisplayLang=en) download for anyone who is interested. It is a Microsoft freebie that allows you to edit the meta data on multiple images at once. You can preview the images as you are updating them which is nice too.

[Ray]

We are looking into this. We can confirm that those images are returning with "M (M)" descriptions with our ImageInfo plugin, when there is no sight of these "M"s according to Pro Photo Tools or XP's (right click) Properties page.

On the other hand, we have also confirmed that it is possible to clear a field in XP's right-click Properties page for an image's comment, and still have that field's content present when the same image file is opened in Pro Photo Tools or Vista.

Do you know what application created these images originally (before you used Pro Photo Tools to add meta data to them)? Unfortunately, different programs create EXIF data very differently, and it would seem that a certain app created an EXIF format which is incompatible with our current image plugin. We'll look into this further and see if we can find a solution.

[cyndiee]

The images were taken with various cameras by different people, but I often times crop, resize and/or straighten them with "Microsoft Picture It! Photo Premium 9" which came with my PC a few years ago. I used the Pro Photo Tools after any edits to the pictures.

Thanks for looking into it.

[Ray]

We have sent you a new build of the image plugin via e-mail. Please let us know if the problem persists.

[cyndiee]

It worked! Thank you so much for your help!:D

[Ray]

For anyone else having this problem, the updated image plugin is now available on our website and also included in the plugins package. You can download it from here (http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/plugins.html).