How to time stamp a video feed?

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › How to time stamp a video feed?

stuffed

215 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 1

Topic # 138375 1-Jan-2014 15:07

Ok you geeks - we "pipe" a front of the house camera feed through the RF cables to a number of TVs in our multi story home. Used a 1989 CCTV tape recorder to date and time stamp the video. This machine has now croaked (they should last longer than this......).
Anyway the question is how can I now in 2014 technology time stamp the video?!
That is without ending up a financial cripple.
Thanks

GregV

717 posts

Ultimate Geek
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Subscriber

Reply # 960011 1-Jan-2014 17:43

One person supports this post

Have a clock in the camera's FOV? :)

Are you capturing this footage, or solely viewing live?
Does the camera have any ability to add the date/time?
What are you using to split the signal to the multiple TVs?

michaelmurfy

6548 posts

Uber Geek
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Moderator

Trusted

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Reply # 960018 1-Jan-2014 17:55

I use Zoneminder personally along with a capture card, works well!

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
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stuffed

215 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 1

Reply # 960202 2-Jan-2014 10:14

The video is "piped" via an AV Modulator - live and also this is fed into a DVR. OK can get a video out on this with date and time but it is very small and hard to read.
My 14 year old camera does not have date and time functions but works very well.
So what am really looking for is something I think is called a character generator?

Shimmer

52 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 10

Reply # 960494 3-Jan-2014 02:30

If you're after a DIY solution you could go down the arduino route. I used to use arduino for an onscreen display overlay for the video feed on my multirotor. These days they make a prebuilt project board for video (google arduino video experimenter) grab some sample code for a clock and the text overlay and you should be able to put it together fairly easily . This does assume it's just a single feed you want to timestamp.