Possible to render visible time code?

[Karlos]

Anybody know of a way to render a visible time code overlay onto a MSP project in Video Editor?

Would like to be able to send a time-code-visible 'draft' off so that I can get comments back that are keyed to the code without having to worry about the client figuring out how to display the time on their player. Also makes the draft ugly enough to be clearly a draft.

Hope there's a way inside the product to do it? Only other idea I had was to produce a computer-generated alpha-masked video file that I overlay onto the timeline....

Thanks,
Karl

[Ron P.]

Hi Karl,

AFAIK, this can not be done in MSP. However there is a free application that can do this. DV Date. It does more then just overlay a date/time onto the video. Check it out here:

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

What is DVdate?

DVdate is a powerful utility for processing AVI files in general, and specially AVI DV files. It features many useful functions, easy and fast to apply even to a great number of avi files at one time. For example:

convert a DV file from type 1 to type 2 (and reciprocally): It is useful when importing files into some video editing software that accept only videos of type 2, like Pinnacle's Studio. DVdate may recognize even some strange DV types, like those produced by Movie Edit Pro and convert them to regular DV types.

convert a non DV file into a DV file (Pal or NTSC): it is useful when editing a project with DV files, to import easily a video clip, that was compressed with anything else than DV like DivX or Mjpeg.

convert a DV file from Pal to NTSC or reciprocally: it is useful to make a DVD in NTSC format with a camcorder in DV Pal.

inlay datecode or timecode into the frames of a DV file: it is useful to display the date and time of capture on the screen, like the analog camcorders used to do. This function is highly personalizable, with nice features (change font, position, schedule to display ay each scene change, display the datecode on two lines, adjust the alignment...

export a text file with the list of scenes from a DV video: it's useful to catalog DV tapes, even to make a database of all scenes for instance in Excel.

fix the framerate of an avi file : it may fix some out of sync issues, specially when an analog capture board did not set the correct framerate

rename avi files by adding their datecode or timecode: it's useful when sorting video clips and archiving them.

many other features are available: extract audio to WAV, fix a time difference, change the FourCC of the codec...

Ron P.

[Karlos]

DVdate sounded like the solution, but unfortunately it only reads the time code as recorded by the camera. If you take an AVI output file from Video Editor, there is no time code recognized by DVdate.

Even if DVdate had worked, it only works with AVI files, so I would have to render my entire project to AVI just to overlay a time code, and then compress to MPEG for the review copy of the DVD.

Since I want the time/frame codes in project-space, starting at 0:0:0:0, maybe the only easy solution is an alpha-overlaid (or chroma-keyed) counting video. I've got a couple of ideas on how to generate such a thing, but maybe there's an easier idea out there...

DVdate is a cool tool to know about, though. Thanks!!

Karl

[bop]

I dont usualy cruze msp however this could help http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... t=timecode if not ill stay away in the future

Brian

[Karlos]

Thanks, Brian!!

This is perfect. I did not realize at first that the display is customizable since in MSP 8, the filter has no controls in the Effects Manager. For anyone reading this thread using MSP 8, you need to right-mouse the Timecode filter in Effects Manager and select "Customized Dialog" to get the Timecode customization dialog.

Since it is a video filter and applies to a clip, I just need to apply it to a color clip the length of my entire project and do a chroma key overlay. Works fine.

Thanks very much!

Karl