If it's able to separate the audio track, why couldn't it separate the subtitle track separately? Why is it that TSMuxer from 3 years ago can split all these up?
Almost every camcorder these days write this information in the file.

You're barking up the wrong tree.

Your GH2 records video and audio, Time of Day *data*, and it does a really bad job of recording timecode (because every clip starts at zero)

The TC and TOD are data, not subtitle tracks. Your camera and probably some player software can superimpose the data over the image for you but this is not the same as a subtitle track.

Evidently, TSMuxer will extract the TOD data for you and create a subtitle file in SUP format. I imagine it has to create a new subtitle entry for every frame of video, which probably results in a very loooong SUP file.

Video editing software doesn't normally retain source TC or TOD in renders. This is by design because there's no need for it. When you edit and the render out a new file that file normally needs it's own timecode. There's absolutely no need at that point to have the original source TC (and people don't normally use TOD for anything).

The exception to this would be forensic and surveillance applications but in these cases you aren't supposed to be editing things anyway. And Vegas isn't a tool for forensic use.

So, to make a long story short, this is not a bug, it's a misplaced expectation. Sorry.

Rob

"I own camcorders that record the time/date stamp in the .mts file."

Are you sure that this information is not stored in an auxilliary file accompanying the .mts file?

My video camera produces .mts files with a PGS (presentation graphic stream) format track which I assumed was for GPS data, but I have never used the GPS.

I do time/date subtitling all the time with my SR11... it's not a big issue..... been doing this for a few years now.

Drag your clips DIRECTLY from the cam to your hard drive (do not use PMB). The original time/date will then show up in Windows Explorer. Get yourself a batch rename program which can rename the clip with the windows "date created".

( I use ReNamer; http://www.den4b.com/?x=products

There are several ways from this point..... I use the "quicklabel" feature in the EXCALIBUR extension to automatically create an overlay track with the time/date... but excalibur does cost a few bucks (worth it though). There are some free methods however.

With the overlay track, I can either compost it directly into the video... but most of the time I simply use the (supplied) "export regions as subtitles" script and I get a nice neat subtitle file ready for Blu Ray.

It's not just the GH2, but other camcorders as well. Sony, Canon, etc. I'm not worried about the "timecode" but I am concerned about the time/date stamp of when it was recorded.
Mediainfo says it's a separate PGS subtitle track, so does TSmuxer and other applications. So it is in fact a separate stream. My media server (SageTV) shows this track when I hit the subtitle button, exactly the same as with Blu-Ray and DVD.

"There's no need for it". Says YOU. I have many short clips of my kids and with the unedited video clips I can hit the subtitle button on my remote and the time/date is displayed in the corner. It's very handy with 6+ years of HD camcorder footage to instantly know the time/date something was recorded.

Also, there's an app called "Frame Ring" that is an AVCHD trimmer that does not re-encode. The resultant track has the PGS stream intact. Look, I completely understand if you re-render that it would not be present; I'm saying it'd be nice to have video/audio/PGS tracks on the editing timeline.

I'm positive it's included in the file itself, not a secondary file.

...or, have the video editing app read and display the pgs stream that's already included in the file...would be much easier.

Currently when I edit and export this information is lost

The problem is with editing and exporting. When you do that the time data is normally thrown away because you're creating something new.

As far as it being "exactly the same as with BluRay and DVD", well, under the hood it's not at all the same. An actual subtitle in the sense used by a DVD has a bit of text start at one point in time and end at a later point. It also contains information about the size, color, and placement of the text. TOD should be more like a continuous stream, just like TC.

But this is nitpicking. What you seem to want is for an NLE to cut clips together and include that TOD stream in the rendered files. If you do a dissolve I guess somehow the TOD stream dissolves too?

Rob

Does the audio dissolve too Rob? :)

ANY file, be it written by a camera or by a computer... has a time/date stamp on it. As already stated, windows recognizes the time/date stamp on your MTS files (be they from the GH2 or another cam) so long as you don't run it through the cam's supplied software (which re-writes that time/date stamp).

If you use this info as suggested above, then you don't need Vegas to see any additional file info. I've been doing time/date subtitling for years now without Vegas using or seeing any PGS stream.

Does the audio dissolve too Rob? :)

I guess you got me there. It's a crossfade.

In a transition, the audio and the video transition. What transition should the TOD do? How should that be rendered in the edited output?

The point of course is that neither source TC nor source TOD get recorded in the render.

Rob

Rob, when you say "ANY file, be it written by a camera or by a computer... has a time/date stamp on it." do you mean the typical Date Created, Date Modified, etc that the filesystem makes? or do you mean the rolling Time of day stamp that is continously recorded, like what's done on DV tapes.

The TOD I'm talking about, and what I assume Shield is talking about, rolls along just like timecode as you play the tape or original file. It's what Vegas Capture uses to do scene detection, for instance. Your subtitle method would just simply display one time throughout the clip, and then display the next time for the next clip.

Actually, it'd be good enough for what Shield needs. Unless he really want's to clock the seconds of his kids' lives.

Rob

"do you mean the typical Date Created, Date Modified, etc that the filesystem makes? "

Yes.
(I'm not speaking of tape cameras) Any cam that writes to a hard drive or to a card will have a "date created" stamp on it.... just like any file written on a computer. The time/date is there from the year, right down to the second. My subtitles come out as MONTH/DAY/YEAR HOUR:MINUTE:SECOND for each clip. You simply have to be careful and COPY that file to your computer so you don't change that date. If for example you import the file using something like the supplied software (Picture Motion Browser) it re-writes the MTS file as a M2TS thereby destroying the original time/date stamp.

Bottom line.... you don't need a PGS stream because the time/date is already there in the file itself

"Unless he really want's to clock the seconds of his kids' lives."
Clocking seconds can be done with the time/date stamp as well.

There is a free time/date extension tool for Vegas that will use the time date stamp and create a sort of 'moving' time clock that will click off the seconds in each clip. It does this by creating an overlay of the clip start time plus one second for each additional second of the clip.

I've tried it.... don't like it. It creates an absolutely huge subtitle file!

I like using excalibur the best... but if anybody wants to try the free extension noted above;

http://www.elisanet.fi/paavo.jurvelin/

" If for example you import the file using something like the supplied software (Picture Motion Browser) it re-writes the MTS file as a M2TS thereby destroying the original time/date stamp."

Well not really. The file gets renamed according to date and time for you. Admittedly without formatting, the string of digits is a bit hard to read. However, I'm sure that your you-beaut file renamer could fix that.

And a further advantage of using PMB is that files that have been chopped into 2GB or less chunks to comply with the file system will be stuck back together again without you having to worry about it.

"Well not really."

Yes... really.
PMB does of course rename the file with the time/date... but it ALSO removes the MTS container and sticks it in a M2TS container... which does IN FACT destroy the original "date created" file stamp.

"And a further advantage of using PMB is that files that have been chopped into 2GB or less chunks to comply with the file system will be stuck back together again without you having to worry about it."
This can be done with Vegas's DEVICE EXPLORER import

"but it ALSO removes the MTS container and sticks it in a M2TS container... which does IN FACT destroy the original "date created" file stamp"

.MTS and .m2ts are the same thing. The camera media file system only permits 8.3 file names in upper case, so .m2ts gets called .MTS. I did a FC /B (binary file compare) on a .MTS file and the transferred .m2ts and it reported no difference. The file date info is stored in the folder (directory) and has nothing to do with the container.

Clocking seconds can be done with the time/date stamp as well...

So, a lot of what I've said was based on wrong assumptions about what Shield was trying to do and about what the PGS stream actually consists of. My apologies. I didn't know what was in a PGS stream and I still don't really know. I read the words "Stream" and "Track" and assumed we were looking for a running Time of Day track rather than a simple timestamp for the first frame. It only started to come clear when Shield said he wanted it for 5 years worth of home movie clips. And based on all <edit>my first assumptions</edit>, Rob Frank's suggestion made no sense. Now it does.

The fact remains that editing clips in Vegas shouldn't preserve this data in the rendered output. That even applies to simply trimming one clip. You'd think that this might not be so but once you put clips on the timeline your context is a timeline, not an individual clip. Should Vegas be able to figure out when to preserve this sort of data and when not?

So, you just have to employ workarounds as both Rob and Shield described. Vegas has never gone out of it's way to support subtitles. Yes, there are script commands that help Vegas with this but DVDa has been the application that gives you a subtitle track that you can edit. Not Vegas.

Would it be nice if Vegas could help out here? Sure. People are usually more familiar with Vegas and would like to lay out their subtitles in a familiar environment. Face it, you could spend weeks, months, or years editing a project in Vegas. It's bound to be more familiar than DVDa. And it might be quite handy to pull metadata out of media files for use in all sorts of timeline markers. But the fact that Vegas doesn't do this isn't a bug and quite probably isn't high on the new features list. Really, there isn't a subtitle feature in Vegas so what would you fix? It's all scripts.

Rob Mack

".MTS and .m2ts are the same thing."

It's a moot point. If the file is altered or messed with in ANY way then the time/date stamp gets changed to reflect the new standing. You have in essence created a new file so the time/date stamp will now read the date the file was created.... hence the term "DATE CREATED".

"The fact remains that editing clips in Vegas shouldn't preserve this data in the rendered output"

Well... yes and no. Remember that vegas never actually alters the original file. It stays intact..... along with the original time/date stamp. Of course the NEW rendered file will have the date rendered as the "DATE CREATED".

When it comes to metadata Vegas is out to lunch.
Today both the consummer cameras and the professional one from Sony and others record a considerable array of useful data apart from just the vision. That covers when and where the shot was taken, lens data, take/notake, data from the electronic slate etc. Vegas 10 appears to present some of this data as event markers e.g. record start / stop but that's about it.

Other apps can preserve this data throughout editing.

A rendered file should be able to preserve source TC and file names etc. QT reference files contain all the data to build the entire video from the source.

Bob.