What is the ALBM folder and .BIN file on an Olympus E-M10 III SD card?
Asked 3/11/2019
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2 answers
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On an Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark III, the SD card contains the usual DCIM folder for photos, plus an ALBM folder with a file such as ALB67ZZ8.BIN. On a Mac, trying to open that .BIN file with Archive Utility creates .cpgz files instead of opening anything useful. What is this ALBM/.BIN file for, and is there any way I should open it?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
2 Answers
5
This is a fantastic question!
I copied the file off my E-M10 III (same filename incidentally, so not based on serial) and opened it in HxD. This is what the beginning looks like:
Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F Decoded text
00000000 30 30 30 33 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0003............
00000010 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000020 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 ................
00000030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000040 00 00 00 00 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000050 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 ................
00000060 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000070 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
00000080 0B 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0C 00 00 00 ................
00000090 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0D 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
000000A0 00 00 00 00 0E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
000000B0 0F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 ................
000000C0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 11 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
000000D0 00 00 00 00 12 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
000000E0 13 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 14 00 00 00 ................
000000F0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 15 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................
This is the first portion of the file. The first column shows the position in the file in hexadecimal. The next sixteen columns show the value of each byte in hexadecimal. Finally, the far right shows the equivalent text.
Clearly, not much is stored in the beginning of the file. I had a quick look through the rest of the file, but it appears to be empty except the beginning and the end.
My next guess is that ALBM is a shortened version of 'album'. While the camera doesn't have a feature for saving photos to different albums, it does include a 'My Clips' feature. It is used for basic video editing in camera - it basically allows joining short video clips (up to 16 seconds each) and photos together, as well as adding artistic effects, transitions and background music. Basically for making a cheesy holiday powerpoint in-camera.
While this is just a guess, I went ahead and added some photos to a new clip, and downloaded the file off the camera again. The file had changed.
Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F Decoded text
000004A0 63 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 50 36 31 37 c...........P617
000004B0 31 31 34 35 2E 4A 50 47 64 00 02 00 DA 70 58 00 1145.JPGd...ÚpX.
000004C0 2F B5 0C 00 00 00 01 00 50 36 31 37 31 31 34 36 /µ......P6171146
000004D0 2E 4A 50 47 64 00 02 00 29 7A 54 00 8E B7 0C 00 .JPGd...)zT.Ž·..
000004E0 00 00 01 00 50 36 31 37 31 31 34 38 2E 4A 50 47 ....P6171148.JPG
000004F0 64 00 02 00 2F BB 53 00 3D BC 0C 00 00 00 01 00 d.../»S.=¼......
00000500 50 36 31 37 31 31 34 39 2E 4A 50 47 64 00 02 00 P6171149.JPGd...
00000510 4B 79 50 00 87 BE 0C 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 KyP.‡¾..........
This is a different section of the file to the one before, but this was not present previously.
The filenames of the images I added to the My Clip appear. The strange characters between them are likely other metadata, potentially when I added them or duration. I haven't used the My Clips feature so I'm not sure what attributes each section has.
It doesn't appear to contain the filenames of images that are marked as needing to be shared or being protected.
Originally by user92647. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user92647
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
The ALBM folder is most likely camera-created metadata, not a folder containing missing photos or videos. Based on the answers, the .BIN file appears to be a proprietary Olympus binary file used for internal organization, such as an album/catalog/index and possibly preview-related data.
A .BIN file is not a ZIP archive, so macOS Archive Utility is the wrong tool for it. The .cpgz files you see are just Archive Utility reacting to a file format it doesn’t understand—they do not mean the camera file is “duplicating itself.”
In short: you generally do not need to open this file at all. Your actual images should be in DCIM. Unless you’re doing low-level reverse engineering with a hex editor, the safest approach is to leave the ALBM folder alone so the camera can continue using it normally.
If you want your photos, copy them from the DCIM folder. If you are trying to inspect the .BIN file out of curiosity, use a hex editor rather than an unzip utility, but there is no standard viewer for it.
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