In Vegas, apply the "Timecode" effect to the clips in the media pool. You'll then be able to see the timecode from the camera in Vegas' preview window while watching these clips. After you've got your edit points done you can remove the effect from the clips.

If you add the timecode effect to events in the timeline then you'll see the timeline timecode rather than the camera timecode.

I understand how to apply FX to clips in the timeline, but how do I apply them to the Media Pool? Do I just drag the effect into the Media Pool? Thanks for your help.

That will work. I find it easier to right-mouse-button click on the clip and choose "Media FX".

That would make sense. LOL. I just never tried adding them from there. Thanks for your help. I'll try it tonight.

At first I got kind of excited about this because I've always wanted to be able to see DATE and TIME on my captured clips. But I see this doesn't give you the date, so it doesn't do anything for me.

Am I wrong? Is there a way to display time AND date?

There is a DV Date/time stamp field in both the Video Capture 4 and Vegas 4 media pools, but you can't burn this info onto the output or display it in a timeline thumbnail.

I just tried the suggestion and was disappointed that it doesn't do what I'm looking for. It just counts the amount of seconds into the clip I am. This seems like such a trivial thing. Why doesn't Vegas have the option simply to toggle this on or off? My Sony DV camera has this ability. I'm currently using VV3, and it sounds like V4 doesn't do it either. All I want is if I shot the footage on my daughter's birthday, I want it to display "January 6, 2002", just like it does on my Sony.

If you know what you want displayed on the screen, use the text media generator and type it. :) Very simple and easy and you can type anything you want, including "Happy Birthday" in color if you wish.

That's the way I ended up doing it tonight, but if you've got 10-15 different dates on an hour long DV tape it gets a bit tedious to sit there with the camera beside you while editing. The information is embedded into the AVI file, so I don't see why they can't let us display it, that's all. I appreciate the help.

Sonic Foundry,
What are the chances of a feature like this appearing in the future?

Agreed!

That would be a great feature, even if just a switch to turn the display of info on/off in the preview window.

I tend to leave some tapes for a while before editing, and they have a range of dates, would be nice to be able to get that info, after importing all video.

In the media pool the DV Time Date is empty?

Such a feature, the ability to have the original date AND time displayed on the playback, is something I have asked for several times. It would be WONDERFUL as part of evidence in court. Otherwise, using video is VERY problematic. The shooter, the editor, and the person setting up and displaying the video ALL have to testify. For practical purposes it is a MESS without the evidence being IN the evidence.

bstaley:

You can do something kind of like you are asking if you use a video capture program called "ScenalyzerLive" instead of Vidcap. Scenalyzer is a really cool program that has matured in the past 6 months or so and is now quite stable and functional.

Scenalyzer is able to automatically name every clip captured from the camera by that embedded date/time stamp. For example, a video shot of me sitting here at the keyboard right now would automatically be named "20030309 18.12.00.avi" which means it was shot on the 9th of March 2003 at 6:12pm.

Then, since you know the date of the beginning of the clip, you could use the frame-counting feature in Vegas to determine the precise time of any particular frame of that clip. I know, it's not as elegant as simply reading the time metafile from the avi directly, but that's all I can think of for now. The date/time stamp feature is the primary reason I exclusively use ScenalyzerLive, but there are some other really neat things it does that I'm beginning to use. For example, it can read through an entire miniDV tape in 5 minutes and create a 5-minute video record, broken down by clips. You can peruse those clips, and tell Scenalyzer to go through again, capturing in full quality only those clips you need. Program is cheap, too.

There is a filter in VirtualDub called "Alidator" that puts a date/time stamp on each frame. Problem is, the stamp represents the time the clip is run through VirtualDub. Why someone would need to know that is beyond me.