Flickr Backup Automation and Video Export

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Let’s begin by saying that Flickr is not intended for video. It’s meant for photographers to backup and share their photos with like-minded individuals. When you use the Flickr app for iOS and Android it automatically backs up videos, and photos.

After some trial and error I was able to get the exif data attached to photos and then sorted chronologically into folders. In the process I noticed that almost 10,000 files were missing when the transfer was finished. The reason for this is that they were video files.

Quick Breakdown

When I tried to add exif data to these files, I failed. I sorted them into three categories instead:

  • DV: 148
  • HD: 9719
  • 4K: 110

Scale of the Issue

Whatsapp, Flickr and other apps strip exif data from photos. The result is that, after many years of taking and sharing videos you end up with 9700 ghost or orphan files that have the day they were shared or an archive was created as their creation date. If I was to import these files I would have over 9000 video files for the day the archive was created.

Whilst this is a bug, it is also a feature. It’s a bug because when I experimented with importing photos to Flickr from Google Photos I ended up with thousands of photos in a single day. Luckily it was easy to select and delete all of them.

The Alternative Solutions

When you use Google Takeout to export photos they might be missing their exif data but they are organised by year, month and day, so if you have difficulties with re-attaching exif data with the json files, which are stored along with the photos and videos, then you can use the folder hierarchy to roughly sort media assets ahead of being more thorough, weeks or months later.

And Finally

Getting data from JSON files to photo files was complicated but getting that JSON data to videos took an extra step. That extra step was to match the video file names to photo filenames, and then match the photo file names to JSON information, before moving the JSON data back to the video files.

Summary

  • match video file names with photo filenames
  • Check CSV file for relevant Exif data
  • add Exif data to video files.

Conclusion

Whilst backing photos up from Android and iOS is automatic, don’t rely on it for video. For video kDrive is better because it doesn’t strip exif data. I would see Flickr as a backup backup for video. it’s a backup solution on top of your primary offsite backup solution.

p.s. I’m not certain the solution worked, at the time of posting.