Time stamp help

Help/How To
1

Hi everyone,

I’ve been looking for the text filter option to display the time of the video file, but can’t find anything anywhere.

I have found the following options, but I would like to display the time associated with the file rather than the local time, or the timecode of the frame. Apologies if this has been asked before, I have searched the forum but couldn’t find a similar issue.

Many thanks,
Texa

#createdate# - Best guess of file creation date

  • #smpte_df# - SMPTE drop-frame timecode of the frame
  • #smpte_ndf# - SMPTE non-drop-frame timecode of the frame
  • #timecode# - same as #smpte_df#
  • #frame# - frame number of the frame
  • #filedate# - modification date of the file (GMT)
  • #localfiledate# - modification date of the file (local)
  • #localtime# - current system date and time
2

Hi @TSim and welcome.

I’m assuming you want the current duration of the clip but not the frame part.
Not sure if the frame part can be cut out, but if placing the count offset to the right is acceptable,
a work around is to select the #TIMECODE# option then offsetting it as shown below.
This will then only make the hours, minutes and seconds visible.

offset

3

Hi @Paul2,

Thanks for your reply. I perhaps should have been a bit clearer, I’m looking for a way to put a time stamp on the clip that relates to the time on the device when the clip was recorded. For example, I began recording at 14:34, and would like to make this time visible on the clip.

I’m not sure it is possible, or if there is a text filter option that exists for this purpose. #createdate# is close, but I’d like the time instead.

Thanks again for your help.

4

OK got it now.

Sorry, don’t know of any way to achieve that other than manually.

5

There is an advanced feature for the text filter that might meet your needs. The time based keywords can be succeeded by an strftime compatible code that specifies the format of the time.

For example,
#createdate %I:%M:%S %p#
will display the time as “01:12:44 PM”

The keywords that support this feature are: createdate, filedate, localfiledate, and localtime

The strftime format specification can be found here:
http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man3/strftime.3.html

This feature is poorly documented. I have not thought of a user friendly way to add this to the user interface.

If someone wants to contribute to the Shotcut documentation, they could document this feature in the documentation section:

6

Thanks Brian, this is almost what I am looking for! Can the code also allow the time to change as the clip plays? E.g. Clip starts at 13:44 and ends at 13:47 and the text filter is true to this time change?

Apologies if I’m not being awfully clear, it’s quite tricky to describe.

7

The date/time keywords in the Text:Simple filter can not “count”. They only display static metadata about the clip.

The only way to get the time to count up is to use the Timer filter. You will have to manually set the Offset property to match the time of the first frame in the clip.

8

There is also a “stopwatch” facility using the Text: HTML filter and my webVfx framework - see:

http://www.elusien.co.uk/shotcut/webvfx

9

Thanks everyone,

I found the easiest way was to get the exact clip start time by using the text filter:
#filedate %I:%M:%S %p#

Then using the Timer filter with the following:

Duration: 00
Format: HH MM SS
Offset: Start time of clip
Direction: Up

10

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