Get Original Creation Date

[Moira123]

Hellooooo there,

Its been a real long time since I visited. Retired now, I have plenty of time to do video editing.

With just 128 GB hard drive on my macbook air, I transferred a lot of my video to a little flash drive. Does anybody know how to get the original creation date of these videos?

I tried the terminal thing and it is showing the same creation date as in the finder. Wrong. Its the copy date to the drive. I thought macs are better than windows just because I never get viruses anymore and have never needed to re-format my drive. But there are few choices of hardware/software out there, reasonably priced, that can capture analog video to the mac. Is that your experience?

I could transfer these files to a Windows XP if I had to, if someone knew what software would enable me to see the original creation date of these videos. Then I can change the creation dates one at a time if I needed to. batch would be better....

thanks guys
moira

[Case]

Some video formats, like e.g. mp4, can have their file creation timestamp inserted inside the file. This would be independent of the file creation date as displayed by the OS.
Try VideoSpec or MediaInfo for embedded meta information.

[Moira123]

Thank you! VideoSpec worked. My first reply was lost so this is a rewrite.
VideoSpec worked with the files from the Flipshare camera VID000XX.mp4 and the Canon .AVI files. Just be sure to check out all three views: simple, complete and expert. It did not work with the .mpg files. It can do multiple files at a time although it could get a little confusing as the name of the file is way at the top of the page and the encoding time is way at the bottom. And it is displayed in columns. You have to manually change your file names to include the actual creation date. Then you will never have that problem again. The encoding time is the one you want (except for the .avi in which case the creation date was accurate). Ignore the UTC label (Universal Coordinated time also known as Greenwich time) It is displayed in local time (and day) the time and date you set the camera on. Unless of course you live in Greenwich England then local time is equal to UTC time. (better known as Zulu or Greenwich time.)

I will try the Mediainfo software and report back.

[Moira123]

Mediainfo did not work with the .mpg files

[Budman1]

Media Info should work with MPG IF the encoded date is actually encoded in it. If not It will just display information without the encoded/tagged dates.

There is a MediaInfo CLI that you can use to obtain just this information. Below shows that the Encoded time is UTC 09:03:03 AM as set for this test and the correct local time for me is 03:03:03 AM because I am in USA CST (-6 Hours at March 03, -5 hrs during Daylight savings time.) Remember that normally the camera will put encoded in UTC which is NOT the local time the video was created.

[raffriff42]

I tried the terminal thing and it is showing the same creation date as in the finder. Wrong. Its the copy date to the drive.

On Windows anyway, if the file has been copied to a new drive, the Last Modified date will be earlier than the mislabeled Created date - and for unedited files, it will equal the original creation date.

[Attachment 41112 - Click to enlarge]

[Budman1]

Raffriff42 is correct which is why i made the utility shown above and posted to this site change/add encoded date from the modified date if checked. This encoded date can then be used to change created modified date to match. Just depends on whether you check the created to encoded or encoded to created checkbox. Sometimes modified date is the only source of true video encoded time.

[Moira123]

Thank you Bud and Raf. What I ended up doing is finding a known time in the tapes and then subtracting the elapsed time in order to get the exact start time of the tape. I was fairly certain of the date. Well I learned a hard lesson. From now on the creation date and time must go in the file name. Raf, your utility looks great. I will have to give that a try as well. Do you have a link for the CLI?

[raffriff42]

>Raf, your utility looks great.
Thanks, but don't you mean Budman1?

[Budman1]

I will post the latest update location tomorrow since it is late and I have rehab tomorrow 0700AM. LOL

Just so you know, the Utility takes the Windows Created OR the Manual OR the Windows Modified and sets it into the videos Encoded AND Tagged dates, if the Created to Encoded box is checked. If the Encoded to Created box is checked, it will take the Encoded OR Tagged OR Recorded date and set it into the corresponding Windows Created AND/OR Modified Dates.

Also, if you try to modify say a video that does not allow Encoded/tagged/publisher/etc., FFMpeg will try to do it anyway and there goes the video so don't check alter original unless the original is a backup copy!!!!!!! You can also rename with date and time added to the original name as shown in the example above.

I have made most everything drag and drop but error checking is minimal so as I mentioned I do not check things like every metadata tag for every video type and similar stuff. To be sure you can go to https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/FFmpeg_Metadata and get a list of what is valid.

Thanks
Budman1

[Moira123]

>Raf, your utility looks great.
Thanks, but don't you mean Budman1?

[Moira123]

I will post the latest update location tomorrow since it is late and I have rehab tomorrow 0700AM. LOL

Just so you know, the Utility takes the Windows Created OR the Manual OR the Windows Modified and sets it into the videos Encoded AND Tagged dates, if the Created to Encoded box is checked. If the Encoded to Created box is checked, it will take the Encoded OR Tagged OR Recorded date and set it into the corresponding Windows Created AND/OR Modified Dates.

Also, if you try to modify say a video that does not allow Encoded/tagged/publisher/etc., FFMpeg will try to do it anyway and there goes the video so don't check alter original unless the original is a backup copy!!!!!!! You can also rename with date and time added to the original name as shown in the example above.

I have made most everything drag and drop but error checking is minimal so as I mentioned I do not check things like every metadata tag for every video type and similar stuff. To be sure you can go to https://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php/FFmpeg_Metadata and get a list of what is valid.

Thanks
Budman1

Immmmmm, I am speechless, thanks so much Bud, wow!

[Budman1]

Ok.. Major update and rewrite of code. Tests pretty well. You can now use Original Name or Date/time + Name or '-" + name.
You can also silence the errors but get them in the summary window after. If you wish to set Encoded and Created both manually, set Encoded first then Created. Setting Encoded manually sets Created and modified to the original times.

Change_Date_Time_NewForm3_1.12.4.6Beta Too many problems removed until reverted back without Cyrillic function

UPDATE: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/383072-Get-Original-Creation-Date?goto=newpost

Budman1

[Attachment 43891 - Click to enlarge]