[FFmpeg-user] Draw original timecode on the output file

[Phil Rhodes]

> The software that capture the file from miniDV cassette is called Edius.

I would have thought Edius would have put timecode in its captured files, although I don't know how.

You may wish to try examining the AVI files you have in something like RIFFView (google for it), which will let you examine the information that is present in the AVI in a convenient way. I found that an AVI saved by Adobe Premiere 5.0.3 had a RIFF LIST containing timecode information called "Tdat" at offset 496, containing two chunks called "tc_O" and "tc_A", which contain the start timecode of the file in text format, as in "00:00:00:00". I have no idea if this is an Adobe-specific thing that Edius may not support. I also don't know if the offset will be consistent, so it may be worth searching an example file for "Tdat" or "tc_0" or "tc_A". I don't know what the significance of the O and A numbers is. They appear to be identical in all my files.


You could presumably write a script to extract this and use it, if it exists. Whether ffmpeg is capable of generating an overlay in the hh:mm:ss:ff format I have no idea.

If you use RIFFview to look in the RIFF LIST called "movi", you will find chunks called "00dc" which represent the compressed frame data. The timecode is probably also resident in that data, but the documents for how DV streams work is not public and I don't know how you would access it.

P