capturing video frames and knowing system time

[a1s2d3f4]

I'd like to capture video from a camcorder or a camera (i.e., firewire or USB) plugged into my win 8.1 x64 machine and know the system time value for the first frame of the capture.
So, as the frame is captured, I'd like the program to not only write the image to a file, but also write a text file which would contain the system clock time for that first frame.
I need it so that I can sync things up with some other recordings I would be doing in the same time.

I was looking into EE4, because I thought it might be able to capture "metadata", but haven't figured it out yet.

Thanks

[manono]

If using Firewire then you're capping as DV AVI, right? The WinDV capture program can name the captures by the date and time the capture began. As it won't capture that first frame separately or write the time to a separate file it might not be exactly what you had in mind.

[a1s2d3f4]

Yeah, thanks. I wanted something that gave me the precise timestamp of the first frame in the video stream, though it's possible that WinDV timestamps the name of the file with exactly that value - I'll need to run some experiments. Something tells me, it's the time when the file is opened for writing, which does not have to coincide with the frame capture moment

[manono]

I'm not sure just how precise you want the time. Have a look at the picture on the WinDV page and you'll see it names each video capture by year, month, day, hour, minute, and second. A test capture I just did is named:

Movie.2015-03-09_09-34-22.avi

I believe the name is given when I click on 'Capture'.

[a1s2d3f4]

I would require millisecond resolution to determine frame start time.

[Cornucopia]

Use a format that supports recording/capture of true SMPTE timecode along with your V + A. If your camera/recorder and/or cap device doesn't support it, you could try writing" faux timecode" to one of the audio tracks and then use that to sync with DSLRsync.

Scott

[a1s2d3f4]

Interesting idea, thanks.
I think EE4 allows writing audio from a file into the stream, and I do happen to have a file that is nothing but SMPTE from beginning to end.

However, I am also capturing another signal through another program that's reading data through a kind of serial port (not audio or video) that will "not know" where it is in relation to the SMPTE in the video. All I can do is use my computer's system clock to "time stamp" its captured data events. That's the data I want to be able to sync to the video I am recording.