The downloaded video is in a random date in the past

[MahmoudAboQora]

Checklist

• [ ] I'm reporting a bug unrelated to a specific site.
• [X] I've verified that I'm running the latest version of yt-dlp.
• [X] I've verified that I'm running the latest stable version of Seal or any later preview versions.
• [X] I've read the Contributing guidelines and Code Of Conduct.
• [X] I've checked that the site i'm trying to download from is in the Supported Sites list from yt-dlp
• [X] I understand that the issue will be (ignored/closed) if I intentionally remove or skip any mandatory field.

Describe the bug

When i try to download a specific video it works like magic, but when it's downloaded it's automatically set at a wrong date, i want it automatically put at the time i start the downloading

If there's a solution please lemme know and thanks

To Reproduce

No response

Error reports

..

Screenshots & Screen Records

No response

Additional context

No response

[Elsie19]

From what I've gathered it gets the date from the video and sets it from that information.

I think this should be a toggle in the settings because I want videos I download to have it's date set to the time i download it rather than the videos metadata.

[MahmoudAboQora]

I searched all the possible settings and i didn't find anything like that so if you know how to do it please lemme know

[Elsie19]

I searched all the possible settings and i didn't find anything like that so if you know how to do it please lemme know

I'm saying there isn't a setting for it when there should be one.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue is stale because it has been open 90 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 30 days.

[WhenTheClockStrikesMidnight]

This issue is stale because it has been open 90 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 30 days

Probably nice to keep open for now

[hghkd]

Any updates on this issue? My particular situation is that I'm running the latest version of Seal on a Google phone with Android 15. I see this happen the most with Tiktok videos, where I download the video and its metadata initially seems correct.

I have Google Photos automatically back up any new media in Seal's default download folder - when Google Photos finishes backing up the file, I can physically see the downloaded video disappear from its place in the timeline and then when I scrub backwards in time looking for it, I notice that it'll have some random date in the past, usually on the order of 2 - 3 weeks.

Seal doesn't seem like it's somehow grabbing the video's upload date, because even if it were, some of these videos were uploaded the same day that I downloaded them. Happy to give more info if needed.

[MahmoudAboQora]

Any updates on this issue? My particular situation is that I'm running the latest version of Seal on a Google phone with Android 15. I see this happen the most with Tiktok videos, where I download the video and its metadata initially seems correct.

I have Google Photos automatically back up any new media in Seal's default download folder - when Google Photos finishes backing up the file, I can physically see the downloaded video disappear from its place in the timeline and then when I scrub backwards in time looking for it, I notice that it'll have some random date in the past, usually on the order of 2 - 3 weeks.

Seal doesn't seem like it's somehow grabbing the video's upload date, because even if it were, some of these videos were uploaded the same day that I downloaded them. Happy to give more info if needed.

That also what happens to me exactly, but nothing new has been added or changed

[hghkd]

Okay, so I went digging some more into this and I think it's solvable.

Since Seal is essentially just a frontend wrapper for yt-dlp, I looked more into yt-dlp's command arguments and there's one you can add to Seal's Custom Commands:

--no-mtime

Which, if I'm reading yt-dlp's documentation right, should just discard whatever metadata the file might've had about its Date Created field and instead effectively uses the moment the file was downloaded, which is the behavior I was looking for.

I've downloaded a bunch of random videos from TikTok and watched the metadata like a hawk as Google Photos uploads it - I still can't tell if it's a Google Photos problem where it went looking for that previous Date Created field or if it was a Seal problem but it seems fine for now; only time will tell!

I hope this helps anyone else!