Windows 10: "0X88982F52 There is too much metadata to be written to the bitmap"

Question

There have been many posts about this problem here and elsewhere over several years - but it persists. It is a big and frustrating issue for those of us who spend a lot of time on photos. I don't know if there is a will to fix it or not, but assuming there might be, I will give the scenarios I can.

As you know, the error occurs when trying to give a rating, or add a tag, to a photo or video. In fact, in the current Windows 10, unfortunately you can't rate or tag videos at all, so that's all there is to say about videos; the rest mainly applies to photos which will be filetype .jpg.

The error will occur for that file whether the rating is applied in File Explorer directly, or via the Properties-Details pop up, or in other panels. There is no work round I can find - if you copy the file or resize it, the new file will have the same error. (You can take a screen snip and create a new image that can have properties changed but that loses so much quality). The photos can come from any make/model of digital camera, judged by people reporting for many phone manufacturers. I have experienced it recently with images originating from Samsung Galaxy S6 and S9+ among others.

The error only occurs to a minority of images from the same device even if taken at same time and same subject - though on a bad day it can reach 10% of files or more.

I usually go through all my images in Photo Gallery and the images may have been cropped, retitled and perhaps other adjustments made.

They may have been rated, apparently successfully, in Gallery, but when viewed in File Explorer the rating has gone. However, if reopened in Gallery, the rating is still there. (I'll add a screen shot at the end for the same file that gave the error I posted already, showing rating with Gallery but not in File Explorer. (I'll add a screen shot at the end for the same file that gave the error I posted already, showing rating with Gallery but not in File Explorer). Similarly, if the photo was never rated in Photo Gallery but gives an error in File Explorer, the rating can apparently be added in Gallery but does not show in File Explorer.

I think in the past I have tried restoring the original file from the phone, when still available, and it did not exhibit the same error so it does seem to be something happening in Win 10, possibly related to Photo Gallery or File Explorer. Because your more recent 'Photos' app does not support viewing or changing information like Rating and Tags, it cannot be used as an alternative to Photo Gallery to see if the error is similar when using that app. 

File viewed in Gallery - note rating.

File viewed in File Explorer - rating gone and will give the error we started with if we try to add it.

Answer 1

I have the same problem.  It's got to be a Samsung camera software bug.  You can get around it by opening with MS Photos, rotating 360, and the save in place.

Answer 2

This is very interesting. I have applied the method of doing a "minor" rotation using the windows photo app. The new file generated allows adding tags, with the original quality appearing to stay intact.

So this is supporting your observation about thumbnails. In addition, other people have observed that many "outdoor" pictures seem to cause more issues. In my case, very "leafy" pictures have issues, possibly the thumbnails tend to use more space? 

What I would need is a way to have all the thumbnails of my photos "regenerated" in a batch method. Or possibly, if windows creates thumbnails from scratch in its own cache, I might only need to have all thumbnails removed from the pictures themselves and only rely on the "cached on the side" thumbnails in windows?

Anyways, although the above solution is not practical for large amounts of files, maybe I can use a batch exif editor to process my photos to remove thumbnails. I am reading about Phil Harvey's ExifTool to see if that is the way to go, for now.

Answer 3

I'm pretty sure you're right.  I've seen reports of this happening with other cameras

I don't have a certain answer yet, but here is some additional information.  When I add a title to a photo with Windows, it adds a new JPEG application block to the photo to hold XMP data (which encodes titles and tags and whatnot).  I have one clear example of a photo for which the problem happens, and in that photo the EXIF application block is very close to 2^^16 bytes long.  I suspect that someone (in the MS code) is enforcing a limit of 2^^16 bytes for the two application blocks combined.  I don't know if there is a good reason for this.  The standard doesn't seem to impose such a limit.  I also don't know why the EXIF block is so big, that doesn't always happen.  It has never happened for my SONY camera or my older Samsung phone.

In any event, when I perform the loss-less rotation with the Windows photo editor, the new encoding has a much shorter EXIF block, so the problem doesn't arise.

Answer 4

The images that trigger the problem are ones with very large thumbnails in the EXIF metadata.  The rotation operation in the Windows Photo editor reduces the size and resolution of these thumbnails.  I still don't know if the Windows metadata library should be expected to handle either case.  I suspect it should.

Answer 5

I am not so sure it is limited to Samsung. I use a Huawei P20 phone and I am having the same problem. All I am doing (as I have done many times in the past) is to triage my pictures and assign tags. I select a group of pictures that need a tag. When I apply the tags (using windows explorer), sometimes, and not for all the pictures selected, I get the "too much metadata" error.

I am unable to identify a pattern with the pictures that are vulnerable to the problem.

Possibly both Samsung and Huawei use a common base/standard which conflicts with windows. However, my "hunch" with such an error is that windows might be utilizing some fixed sized limit somewhere with the handling of photo metadata which, with the natural evolution of any technology, and ever growing additional features and data attached to photos, this limit is being hit in windows. My guess...windows need to revise the limit that causes the "too much meta data" and either make it flexible, or increase the limit to buy us maybe...another 6 months until new cameras add even more meta data? This is just a wild guess on my part.