Adding Timestamp or counter

[hdbrandon]

I'm trying to add a timestamp to a video I recorded (.avi) to make it appear like a surveillence video. The treads here are saying to use DVdate....I've beeing trying but the directions are confusing and the interface is not understandable at all.

http://paul.glagla.free.fr/dvdate_en_incruster.htm

Can someone please tell me what I need to do? I also have access to the Adobe Master Collection.

I attached a screenshot of what my Inlay looks like.

Please help, I need this down ASAP.

[Cornucopia]

First off, in your original post, you didn't say DV-AVI (just AVI), so I'm not going to assume that what you've got is truly DV material. Unless it IS, the first thing you're going to have to do is convert it to DV. IIWY, I'd use Virtualdub, making sure the dimensions, etc are up to DV spec, and then encoding to a new DV-AVI (probably using Cedocida codec).

The result should work fine in DV date, however, any original "timestamp" info that may have existed as auxilliary data in the original file is now gone. But, I'm guessing that what you wanted to do was create a "timestamp" from scratch, not from original time metadata. So you just set the offset (aka starting point) in DVdate.

I'm not going to go through all the steps of editing the inlay - there ought to be good guides on DVdate's website for that. But once you're all set up, you'll want to export/save/render your output to a "burned-in" DV-AVI copy of your file. Also using the Cedocida codec (also in Type2 format).

From that point on, you should be able to do with it however you want.

HTH,

Scott

edit: You could also skip DVdate altogether and use AVISynth or Vdub directly to create the timestamp, but you might find the inlay editing controls easier to deal with...