Mini DV capture to watermark date/time

[shares]

Hello,

I am copying old mini-DV tapes to the PC. I have connected the Mini DV camcoder to the laptop and can download the contents of the tape as an .avi file (which I then convert to mp4/h265 etc).

I notice the camcoder can display the date/time of the scenes on its own little screen and the capture software (scenalyser) also shows the time/date on its main screen.

Is there a way I can tell scenalyser, or any other capture software, to superimpose the date/time on the captured video just like the camcoder does on its little screen? For example my very old Hi-8 camera would print the date for 5-10 seconds at the beginning of each recording, very handy feature 26 years later! Can I do something similar with scenalyser or other software?

Many thanks

[dellsam34]

What do you mean by superimpose? If Sclive is already showing it, it is already superimposed, Do you mean clear it from the screen after few seconds? If that's the case I'm afraid that it is not possible as it looks like the date and time are hard encoded into the video.

Post the camcorder model and what exactly format the tapes are recorded in miniDV, DVCAM, DVC ...etc.

[oln]

I know at least https://paulglagla.com/en/dvdate-2/ let's you export a .srt subtitle file from the DV AVI and embed the subtitles in the final mp4 (how to embed them depends on the program used to encode). I don't know if it will work if the AVI has been edited in some way after capturing. This way you can turn them off/on on demand when playing the file back. DVdate is seemingly also capable of embedding the timecode in the video, but I think using subtitles are nicer. There may be other apps that can extract timecodes as subtitles too, don't remember if scenalyzer can or not.

Note that whether the datecode actually is correct will depend on whether the date/time was set correctly on the camera when recording.

[shares]

Hi, the camcoder is a Samsung VP-D363. The date/time information is stored on the DV tape and you can have it displayed on the camcoder's mini-screen. The capturing software also displays it but on an "information field", and not on the captured .avi stream.

I would like the date/time to appear on the avi stream too.

[DB83]

Here is a legacy topic which also discusses some tools for the purpose


https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/122401-Date-Time-Captured-by-DV-out-of-Video-Camera

[dellsam34]

Oh I see, SClive is displaying the date in the application window not the video, I would have suggested DVDate but oln beat me to it. There are good suggestions in the link posted by DB83.

[shares]

Hey guys I have had a good look at those old threads, they are very old and links do not work, also have downloaded DVDate, it keeps crashing with large .avi files and for the life of me I have no idea how to use it even for a small .avi file. I can play the .avi file in many video editors (with which I have no experience - all I can do is capture from a camcoder) and they do display the timestamps so all the information has been captured in the avi file, the question is how do I now put the date/time on the video? I presume I need to generate a new .avi file ?

[Brainiac]

I purchased this software years ago and liked it very much:

https://dts8888.com/vDTS/vdts.htm

[Skiller]

I used to use an AviSynth plugin for this called DVAutoTimeStampEx.
It adds the (invisible) DV timestamps to the actual video. The user may change just about anything regarding the formatting, which is neat.

For some reason I cannot find DVAutoTimeStampEx anywhere on the internet. I still have DVTimeStampEx.dll in my plugins folder so I could upload it here if needed.

[Brainiac]

I used to use an AviSynth plugin for this called DVAutoTimeStampEx.
It adds the (invisible) DV timestamps to the actual video. The user may change just about anything regarding the formatting, which is neat.

For some reason I cannot find DVAutoTimeStampEx anywhere on the internet. I still have DVTimeStampEx.dll in my plugins folder so I could upload it here if needed.

It can be downloaded here: http://web.archive.org/web/20071024123608/http://mvideo.ddpp.net/eng/downloads.htm

Edit: Just realized the name of the plugin is not the same as in Skiller's post.

[Skiller]

Edit: Just realized the name of the plugin is not the same as in Skiller's post.

Does not seem to matter; I just compared the one in my plugins folder to the one you linked to (dvtimestampex_0_5_5.zip) and both have the same MD5 checksum, as well as the same date and file size in bytes.
So they are the same.

[Alwyn]

Movie Edit Pro can create a title of the exact timecode for any point in a DV file:


[Attachment 61212 - Click to enlarge]

Scenealyzer can be made to create the filename based on the exact time of the start of each clip:


[Attachment 61213 - Click to enlarge]

Set the Scene Detect to 1 second and each clip will be captured as a separate file, with the name of the file being the timestamp. That can then be used to create a title in your editor.

[Skiller]

For reference, since the original documentation of the DVAutoTimeStampEx plugin seems to be lost, here is what I could gather by looking at my old scripts.




First, you need to set a path to the avi file in DV format to read the date codes from (obviously it should be the same avi just read by AviSynth without any trimming):

"C:\DV Camcorder\MyCapture.avi"

If you want to add the date code not to the entire video but only part of it you can use these two:

firstframe=0
lastframe=-1

Sets the font to be used:

font="lucida console"

Effects to be used for rendering the font.
g: Softens the font rendering
b: Bold
i: Italics
f(frames, frames): Fade effect

For example this fades the date code in and out for 25 frames and softens the font:

effects="gf(25,25)"

(There may be more effects than that but these were all the effects I could find in my old scripts.)

size=22
x=-64
y=512

Should be self-explanatory.



Date format used for drawing the date onto the video:

dateformat="{H:mm:ss}|{dd.MM.yyyy}"

"|" breaks a line.

For hours,
H: 24 hour time format
h: 12 hour time format

For month,
M: 9
MM: 09
MMM: Sep
MMMM: September

textcolor=$00FFFFFF
halocolor=$00000000

Text and halo color to use. The first two are the alpha level (00 = opaque), the last six are the actual color (FFFFFF = white).



If you do not want the entire video to display a date, you can use these two to show a date for a given amount of frames (autolength) after a break in the time code (read: scene change) of "threshold" frames:

threshold=10
autolength=75

For example, this code

DVAutoTimeStampEx("MyCapture.avi", firstframe=0, lastframe=-1, font="lucida console", effects="g",
\ size=22, x=-64, y=512, dateformat="{H:mm:ss}|{dd.MM.yyyy}", textcolor=$00FFFFFF, halocolor=$00000000)

produces this output on PAL DV:


[Attachment 61214 - Click to enlarge]