PowerShell examples to feed arguments to Exiftool without the initialization overhead of launching the process each time

exiftool-example-argsfile.ps1

#
# Exiftool example to process multiple commands without paying the initialization time
# for each call writing to an argument file
#
cls;
$Inputdir = "C:\Photos\Personal\[2007]\[2007-00-00] Test & Test"

# initializes argument file
if (Test-Path c:\temp\tmp.args) { del c:\temp\tmp.args; };
$null | Out-File c:\temp\tmp.args -Append -Encoding Ascii;

# Startup exiftool
Start-Process "C:\utils\exiftool\exiftool.exe" "-stay_open True -@ C:\temp\tmp.args";

# send commands to rename all files based on the photo creation date
# using the following template YYYYMMDD-HHmmSS-Snn.ext
"-d`n%Y%m%d-%H%M%S-S%%.2c.%%e`n-filename<CreateDate`n$Inputdir`n" | Out-File c:\temp\tmp.args -Append -Encoding Ascii;
"-execute`n" | Out-File c:\temp\tmp.args -Append -Encoding Ascii;

# send commands to set all files creation date to the photo creation date
"-filemodifydate<datetimeoriginal`n$Inputdir`n" | Out-File c:\temp\tmp.args -Append -Encoding Ascii;
"-execute`n" | Out-File c:\temp\tmp.args -Append -Encoding Ascii;

# let the window stay open for a while... (or wait for a key)
Start-Sleep -s 5;

# send command to shutdown
"-stay_open`nFalse`n" | Out-File c:\temp\tmp.args -Append -Encoding Ascii;

exiftool-example-stdin.ps1

#
# Exiftool example to process multiple commands without paying the initialization time
# for each call using standard input redirection
#
cls;
$Inputdir = "C:\Photos\Personal\[2007]\[2007-00-00] Test & Test";

# create Exiftool process
$psi = New-Object System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo;
$psi.FileName = "C:\utils\exiftool\exiftool.exe";
$psi.Arguments = "-stay_open True -@ -"; # note the second hyphen
$psi.UseShellExecute = $false;
$psi.RedirectStandardInput = $true;
$psi.RedirectStandardOutput = $true;
$psi.RedirectStandardError = $true;
$p = [System.Diagnostics.Process]::Start($psi);

Start-Sleep -s 2;

# send commands to rename all files based on the photo creation date
# using the following template YYYYMMDD-HHmmSS-Snn.ext
$p.StandardInput.WriteLine("-d`n%Y%m%d-%H%M%S-S%%.2c.%%e`n-filename<CreateDate`n$Inputdir`n");
$p.StandardInput.WriteLine("-execute`n");

# send commands to set all files creation date to the photo creation date
$p.StandardInput.WriteLine("-filemodifydate<datetimeoriginal`n$Inputdir`n");
$p.StandardInput.WriteLine("-execute`n");

# send command to shutdown
$p.StandardInput.WriteLine("-stay_open`nFalse`n");

# wait for process to exit and output STDIN and STDOUT
$p.StandardError.ReadToEnd();
$p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd();
$p.WaitForExit();