Hi folks,

Intending to archive my DV cassettes to harddisks, I captured some scenes to disc to test the outcome. As my desktop system isn't ok currently, I used my netbook for this. It doesn't have firewire, so I captured via USB (and due to the Linux or Kdenlive here not recognizing the camera, I tried via Windows).

Wherever I play back these files, nowhere I can see the date and time data which are on the original cassette. Is it the USB way which doesn't copy them, or would it be the same via firewire? Aren't these data copied in general? Or did I just not choose the right codec for it? For archiving purposes, these data would be of great use.

Of course, I would like to do this work on Linux with Kdenlive, so my by-the-way question is: Do I have any chance from a Panasonic NV-GS300, or would I need firewire anyway?

Thanks for your hints!

Rolf

I have a similar question: I download video via Firewire, but still cannot find the metadata... like by looking at the "properties" of a clip. Whee can I see this?

For example, my trusty old Sony TRV740E recorded things like aperture, exposure time and audio gain continously, but I can only see that data during camera playback. Does this data get transferred to the file on the computer? Should I use any special format or switches on dvgrab? How do I extract this data later?

There are (were) cameras which recorded metadata to a flash chip included in the DV cassette - hope yours didn't. I guess one can read out such data with the original camera only.

My camera does not, so these data should be in the data stream.

The XP on my desktop computer doesn't run currently, and actually I don't want to install Premiere or Media Studio on my laptop's XP, but I would like to know if any of the Windows programs can read these data or maybe they simply rely on the numbering they did when reading the tape.

I just remember vaguely that Premiere as well as Media Studio showed date and time of each sequence, but it's been quite some time ago I worked with it...

Rolf

The TRV740E is "Digital 8". I have inspected the cassette, but found no electrical contacts that would be needed for a flash chip. So I guess all of the the metadata is multiplexed into the DV stream and recorded on tape. Well, could be it is recorded on tape, but on a separate physical track, not muxed with the DV stream. But I dont believe that is the case.

Because in Kino, I can see the date and time of the recording, by opening "properties" below the storyboard on the left. (it is the true time of recording, not of dvgrab file creation, so it must have come from the tape)
The exposure etc. info is not shown in Kino, I can only recall that on the camera itself.

In Kdenlive, I can't even find the date and time.

Meanwhile, I found out two things:

I tried with Kino, just as you told me, and it does show the timecode - so for my use, it should be ok. The avi I tested was even recorded via USB on my laptop, so no worry about archiving...

Second, I found this site http://www.adamwilt.com/DV.html and learned a lot about Type-1, Type-2 and different codecs. It's somewhat older, but still ok if you look for information about DV only.

Rolf

P.S.: Maybe we should ask the coders for a possibility to read out the metadata in Kdenlive?

I checked some tapes that I recorded with edited material back from the computer to the camera.
To my surprise, the exposure data is still there! And it is changing live with the video, so it must be recorded with each frame.


So it is clear that dvgrab does transfer this data to the files it makes. (I do not remember whether I recorded those as type1 or 2...)

So it would be nice, if this would be visible in Kdenlive. I am only afraid, that this data is vendor (or even camcorder model) specific... In that case it would be hopeless...


Is there something like an "avi analyzer" out there in the FLOSS world? At the 2006 solar eclipse, I let the camcorder run, shooting the landscape. I would like to generate an light versus time curve - manually copying the numbers from the camera LCD is a bit tiesome :-)

Exposure data might somehow be encoded in the DV, but it is not documented in the DV specs. As for getting timecode and recording date/time info into Kdenlive, what do you want to do with it besides view it? I do not believe FFmpeg gives access to that info. Libdv does, but integrating while still using the FFmpeg codec will be awkward. I will think about it some even though DV is aging quickly.

There are two reasons for me.

1. Sorting the imported files by their actual date and time of taking could help working in Kdenlive (and any such program). For example, there could be an item in the recording part to ask whether the files should be named after their date+time rather than simply numbering them. Or you could offer a table that sorts the files by names (numbers) OR dates+times just as the user wishes. If you add comments to it, you have an overview like that in Premiere. I know that normally you would just copy everything and live with the numbered files, but having their date+time somewhere would definitely increase overview.

Just had an idea about this, so let me add this: If you could sort your source files by dates and then times for instance, it might be a very smart way of having a source galery for your work, especially when you work with sequential material like in reports, holiday "diary" films and so on. A tree view for the files could be one solution, offering the dates and then a list of takes for each of them.

2. For archiving purposes, it is useful to have date and time somewhere. In an archive such as I am planning to do, there is the choice of either copying the whole cassette into one file or into many takes. If you chose takes, it would be good to have something smarter than just numbers for the files to recognize them more easily. In a single file, this wouldn't matter of course. But it might be that when you browse an archive, you wouldn't do with a program like Kdenlive but with some pure viewer. If your files are just numbered it is this program which has to do the job.

In order to save CPU time during recording, it might be ok to just copy the files and after this is done, browse them to evaluate their meta data in one way or another. Maybe a plugin could do this?

Just my two cents :-)

Rolf

Kdenlive uses dvgrab, which already does support this metadata and can use it for file naming. In Kdenlive settings, Record section, there is an option to put the recording date/time into the filename. Kdenlive's Clip Tree is still very simple and offers very little in the way of library functionality, but as this develops or another tool becomes a good library companion, I agree it would be very nice to have date/time fields for event-oriented browsing as well as timecode for some other view.

Add recording time to captured file name is grayed out in my version of Kdenlive (0.7.6 openSUSE 11.2 64 bit)

Edit: I upgraded dvgrab and it solved the problem.