Date and Time Stamp

[pau101]

Hi all,

I've been lurking for a while but this is my first post.

I am putting together a video on my MacBook with iMovie HD (good so far) which I need to submit for an exam (boo hiss).

One of the regulations is the time and date must be visible on the final copy.

I have looked around the net and found little of any help for mac users. There seems to be some software for this for MSoft but not OS X.

I'm importing from a DV camera so I know it's there as part of the coding but how can I get it to display on-screen??

Any help please???

 

[zioxide]

I don't think that DV tapes embed the date & time. You could probably just make a lower 3rd with a date and time and your teacher wouldn't know the difference.

 

[RedTomato]

Date and time of what?

do you mean of when the original footage was shot? So it appears all mixed up in your edited footage?

Or do you mean date, time and frame counter visible on screen in your film, starting at 00:00:00 and all the way through to the last frame?

Try some sort of frame counter overlay in iMovie or Final Cut.

 

[Texas04]

miniDV video tapes do embed the time and date into the video feed. Odd yes but I just finished a project where it was important to sync the cameras with time feeds and so thats what we had to do.

Unfortunately in our program (Adobe Premier Pro is what we used) when we were capturing with firewire the time and date were not appearing although we had told the camera to display it. Therefore we had to use regular AV cables out to a camera deck and then from the deck to firewire, it was the only way to keep that timecode on the video.

In iMovie if you are looking to overly this type of information on top of the video you may run into some trouble and it may require the use of a plug-in for iMovie. However without using the above mentioned method you will not get original date and time information. You will have to use a counter or estimate the date and time.

If you are doing this in Final Cut Express it may be easier but it will be tricky as you will have to take each second and change the number manually. Those are the only ways I can see it being done however I am not very skilled in some of Apples special effects programs that may be able to automate this for you.

 

[pau101]

stuck with analog

thanks for the replies,

What is needed is the original times of the recording on display. Its a medical video so I guess its to prove things did really happen and I'm not fibbing.

I have had other people tell me that analog was the only was they could keep the format on tape. I think that is what I'll have to do but it seems a shame to loose the digital benefits.

Maybe I should use bootcamp and explore the dark side...

 

[pau101]

Update

Just in case anyone cares or come looking.

In the end I exported the final movie back to the DV tape on the camera.

Then I played from the camera over composite cables to a VHS recorder with the time and date displayed.

These were blank for all the titling but showed the correct times for the shot footage. The final effect was actually quite nice.