date/time stamp on AVCHD possible?

[Mike82]

I bought a Canon HF 20 for home movies is it possible to stamp the date and time onto the videos? I know this can be done manually but that would take forever and be a pain.

When i had minDV cam i used Visual DV Time Stamp and it worked great.

Thanks in advanced.

[Mike82]

There has to be a way other then putting text in the video manually?

[johns0]

Just use subtitles.

[Mike82]

Why is there a lack of software that can do it? AVCHD is used alot now days.

[Mike82]

Do people not put the date/time on there home videos anymore? How are you going to when it was 10 years fom now.

[poisondeathray]

Doing it manually isn't that difficult, and certainly won't take "forever"; maybe that's why nobody has written software for it? It doesn't have to be subtitle. It can be a poster frame or video title/menu intro, then lossless append using tsmuxer

If these files are on your pc, note that they all have "date created" or "date modified" in windows explorer, and you can sort them by that heading in each folder

[Davecom4.6]

Mike, I am having the same problem, on this thread: http://forum.videohelp.com/topic368663.html.

There is no reason we should stamp the time manually if the metadata info is already in the AVCHD file folder structure in-camera. The thing is, I can't figure out what video playback software to use whereby I can replay the .MTS clips with toggle-able on/off date/time info, and shutter speed/aperture info. And if and when I find such a software, will it have been enough to have extracted from the camcorder the .MTS files with their corresponding similarly-named .CPI files, OR do I have to mirror the entire AVCHD file folder structure as it exists in-camera?

[minidv2dvd]

afaik the mts file has no internal date/time info, as that's what is recorded to the cpi (clip info) file.

[poisondeathray]

on most models, I think it's stored in the .mpl

I don't know of any software that displays onscreen any of the date/time/shutter speed etc...

You can try some of the sofware suggestions in this thread
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1018113

One approach might be to use the extractor in the above thread, then format in srt or some text sub format, then toggle on/off for display. You might be able to write a batch script to automate this

[Davecom4.6]

See? minidv and poison both gave conflicting statements on where that metadata is stored: the .CPI or the .MPL. And it may very well be possible that you need both side-by-side to extract all your metadata, or preserve the entire AVCHD folder structure, or some combination of the above ... we need to know exactly what's going on. We need to know what to extract from the camera and preserve for the future, when hopefully players will be able to stream the metadata back with the .MTS.

[minidv2dvd]

here's what the file structure looks like.

[Mike82]

I have talked to the maker of DVMP and he is working on it.

[Davecom4.6]

Cool Mike! That's awesome. Once that would be up and running, maybe there'd be a way to incorporate such an app into my Popcorn Hour A-110 to watch the clips on my TV instead of setting up an HTPC.

[Mike82]

strange the link comes up for something else here but here is the current software hopefully soon he will have it added

http://www.dvmp.co.uk/

[David97]

Edius 5 will put the date/time on AVCHD!

Download the trial and try it. It works great and it seems to get the info from the .mts file itself i copyed a .mts file only from my Canon HF200 and it worked.

[tiresias]

The new version of DVMP Pro will now date stamp AVCHD mts and m2ts files. It will also overlay timecode and f-stop, shutter speed and other camera exposure metadata if you like.

It also plays AVCHD mts/m2ts files and displays date, time and other metadata if your PC is powerful enough. It will also export metadata to CSV files or subtitle SRT files.

So it now works for AVCHD, HDV and DV. See http://www.dvmp.co.uk for a feature list of the new version.

[nitro1973]

I bought a Canon HF 20 for home movies is it possible to stamp the date and time onto the videos? I know this can be done manually but that would take forever and be a pain.

When i had minDV cam i used Visual DV Time Stamp and it worked great.

Thanks in advanced.

I asked once Mirillis (Splash developer) about similar subject.
I dont remember (deleted email form mirillis support so can't even check it out now), but in splash hd-cam and maybe in lite
will be possible to keep date and gps coordinates within m2ts files from AVCHD camcorders. With 2 mouse clicks will be possible to open browser with a map pointing the place where the footage was shot.

This sounds really cool, but i have no idea when will be available.

[nitro1973]

The new version of DVMP Pro will now date stamp AVCHD mts and m2ts files. It will also overlay timecode and f-stop, shutter speed and other camera exposure metadata if you like.

It also plays AVCHD mts/m2ts files and displays date, time and other metadata if your PC is powerful enough. It will also export metadata to CSV files or subtitle SRT files.

So it now works for AVCHD, HDV and DV. See http://www.dvmp.co.uk for a feature list of the new version.

This could be cool software but...
- "* Requires a 3rd party video decoder (codec)"
- gui looks like a crap :/
- For AVCHD playback: * 3GHz, Quad Core (or possibly Core 2 Duo). - this is funny...

[acortesr]

I have been lookig for a long time for any program which let me rename the MTS files with de Date an Time they has been taken.

After a long search I have found the solution for my problem, it is a free program namen EXIFTool.

You can find it here> http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

This utility is designed to extract any type of metadata from EXIF extension in image files but it also extract the data form AVCHD Metadata.

As an example, here is the batch command I used in a directory with a lot pf .MTS video to obtain a .BAT file with all the sentences to rename the videos with new names based on YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS:

exiftool -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S -p "REN $filename $dateTimeOriginal.MTS" -f *.MTS > REName.BAT

The utility comes with an extense documentation to do almost any thing with metadat, it can read it and also can write metadata into the files.

It seems simple and it is very simple but powerful.