Displaying DV time code on your DVD

[pellep]

Hi!

I've found the great tool DV Time Stamp. This is almost the tool I was looking for. What I want to do is getting the timecode information on my DV cam as a subtitle track on my DVD.

Is there a tool, Pro or free or what ever, that can do this?

kindly
/Pelle

[BJ_M]

not as a subtitle -- as that would be at least 1 new subtitle every second or more ..

[BJ_M]

could do it as an alternate stream though

[Cornucopia]

It's a little convoluted, but one thing you could do is this:

1. Capture the DV footage to the HD.
2. Run it through DVTimeStamp & save as xxx_stamped.avi
3. Use AVIsynth or AfterEffects (there are probably others that can do this) to "subtract" or show the difference between the 2 (that being the stamp itself). Save this as xxx_stamponly.avi.
4. Use AVIsynth or VirtualDub or AE, etc. to change the frame rate to match how often you want the subtitle to update--maybe 1 FPS instead of 29.97 FPS. Save THIS as a series of still pictures in a folder: xxx_0001.bmp, xxx_0002.bmp, etc.
5. Use something like Photoshop to automate the modification of the picture file(s) so that they are no longer 24bit, but 4 bit, and so are subpicture compliant.
6. Use Subtitle Workshop, or something similar, to import the pix and export into the subtitle picture format appropriate for your DVD Authoring app.
7. Import into your app and set the timing appropriately (too many ways to do this depending on the app, so I'm not gonna try to give an example).

There are probably a number of shortcuts you could take to lessen the # of steps. Some subtitle editing/converting apps can probably take in 24bit pix, etc.
You could also try using an OCR app to convert the pix to text files, compile them into 1 text script, and load that into those DVD authoring apps that take only text script input for subtitles.

HTH,
Scott

[Safesurfer]

Yes, it is possible, I've done it a few times using a program called DV_Datecode.

See http://www.skydiver.de/stef/datecode_en.htm

Output is a set of three text files:

a TXT file e.g. INPUT.AVI.dv_datecode.txt
a SUB file e.g. INPUT.AVI.dv_datecode.sub and
a SSA file e.g. INPUT.AVI.dv_datecode.ssa.

Together with Subtitle Workshop, and an authoring program that supports subtitles, it's relatively easy to create subtitles that you can turn on and off.

[BJ_M]

well you learn something everyday

[Baldrick]

dv_datecode added to the tool list...thanks for the tip.

[Cornucopia]

Now, THAT's what I call a shortcut!

[pellep]

Thanks everyone for your help, especially to Safesurfer for your tooltip, dv_datecode. That was exactly what I was looking for

Kindly
/Pelle