How Can I View and Add Timestamps to CCTV Videos?

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how can I view and add timestamps to cctv videos

Dear friends, welcome! Today we’re dealing with a widespread and important issue: viewing the timestamps of a surveillance recording. Indeed, as much as “what” happened is important, “when” it happened is also crucial most of the time. Keep reading to find out how Amped Replay lets you see and add timestamps to videos in two clicks!

Timestamps are automatically shown on the bottom left in Amped Replay. To add them to a video, go to Annotate, choose Text, and pick “Time” from the “Add Time and Name” list.

DVR Timestamps: Access Video Metadata

Surveillance videos are typically recorded by a Digital Video Recorder (DVR). A DVR is a computer dedicated to receiving video signals from connected cameras, converting them to digital, compressing and storing them. Like every computer, a DVR has an internal clock. While recording videos, it writes down some date and time metadata (also known as “timestamp”), telling when each frame was captured. To enhance the utility of these recordings, users look to add a timestamp to a video, ensuring that the date and time information is clearly visible for reference and documentation purposes.

As to how this “writing down” occurs, there’s enough to write a book about. Some DVRs will just literally “write over pixels” the date and time, which has the advantage that they will remain there regardless of how you export/acquire footage. But of course, you’re sacrificing the original pixel content there since they are replaced by the timestamp.

arrow pointing date and time on a cctv video recording

Most DVRs will, instead, write the timestamp separated from pixel data. Sometimes, they’ll be made available as a separate file, e.g., a .smi or .srt file. Alternatively, they will be saved inside the same file containing the video stream, according to some proprietary pattern. If you use the proprietary player, it will be able to decode and show the timestamps. However, if you want to import your video into forensic video enhancement software, such as Amped Replay or Amped FIVE, these proprietary-encoded timestamps must be decoded. If you need to add a timestamp to a video for clearer documentation or analysis, understanding how to access and decode these timestamps is essential for effective use in your projects.

Accessing Date and Time Metadata

The good news is that Amped products assist you with decoding and displaying both kinds of timestamps! If you’re using Amped Replay, all you need to do is, as usual, drag the file into the software or open it from the Import tab (which we described recently). For example, let’s say you’re given this file here:

folder

We drag the .dv4 file into Amped Replay, and in a moment we are shown this:

date and time magnified in amped replay

As you can see, the timestamp associated with each frame is made visible on the bottom left, and it will update when you play or skim through the video.

How to Add a Timestamp to a Video

All of the above is great if you just need to know each frame’s timestamp. However, you may also need to add the timestamp to the video you need to export. Of course, Amped Replay is here to assist!

Let’s move to the Annotate tab and click on the Text tool.

annotate tab

You can now check the pretty featured option list that appears below. In the bottom part of it, there’s a promising Add Time and Name dropdown list:

arrow pointing to add time and name dropdown list

Just open the list and choose Timestamp.

add time and name dropdown list

You’ll see that the timestamp is added to the video automatically.

arrow pointing to the timestamp added on a video in amped replay

We can move it around and adjust the text settings to make it look better. My personal taste is yellow text on black background, and position it bottom left:

timestamp with yellow text on black background on a video in amped replay

Once done, remember that you have to set the annotation to remain in all frames! Otherwise, by default, it is only applied to the current frame you’re working on. Just right-click on it and choose Set for all frames.

set for all frames option

One final thing: when adding a timestamp to the video, you can customize the text with the actual timestamp. A prevalent choice would be to write “Timestamp:” followed by the timestamp. If that’s what you’d like, then you can save time by clicking on the Add Label to Macros checkbox before selecting the desired option from the dropdown list.

arrow pointing to the add label to macros checkbox

This way, you’ll get this when choosing Timestamp from the list:

cctv video recording with timestamp

However, you can double-click on the text and type in whatever you like. The timestamp placeholder will be clearly visible ($TIMESTAMP) and will turn to the actual timestamp value as soon as you finish editing (click out of the text box).

timestamp placeholder

Final Note

Always keep in mind that timestamps, like all other metadata, should not be blindly trusted. When you add a timestamp to a video, it’s important to verify the accuracy of the information being displayed. What you’re showing is obviously what the DVR wrote. If the clock was wrong, you’d be showing the wrong time.

That’s all for today! We hope you’ve found this issue of the “Amped Replay Tutorials: How do I do this?” series interesting and useful! Stay tuned and don’t miss the next ones. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook: we’ll post a link to every new tutorial so you won’t miss any!

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