Bug in raw file header `CreationDate` timezone

[oskarsari]

Hey, I'm not sure whether this issue is actually related to RawFileReader, or the data acquisition software. However, I encountered it while working with raw files using RawFileReader. Please feel free to redirect if this is the wrong forum for it.

When reading the timestamp of a raw file by the CreationDate attribute in its header, it claims the timestamp is in "UTC" time-zone, but in fact it is at the local time of the acquisition computer. That is, CreationDate.Kind returns Utc, but in reality should be Local.

Similarly, if I parse the timestamp from CreationDate.Ticks, I get the wrong timestamp (it ignores the time-zone setting of the acquisition PC, and assumes it is at UTC).

So basically, in my understanding, the timestamp in the file header is only correct in case the acquisition PC OS is configured to be at UTC time-zone. If not, the timestamp is wrong. This seems like a bug to me, and so far I have not found a way to infer a time-zone aware timestamp of the raw file reliably. Any suggestions how to go about this?

[oskarsari]

Hey @jim-shofstahl, any ideas how I could get the correct timestamp of a raw file without having to assume the time-zone?