How to time stamp AVCHD video files with DVMP Pro

One of the most frequent uses of DVMP Pro is to time-stamp AVCHD m2ts (or mts) files, so this tutorial steps you quickly through all you need to know if you just want a date and time stamp to be permanently overlayed on your AVCHD video files. And you can do this on Windows 7, Vista or XP.

The tool which does the time-stamping in DVMP Pro is called the Burn-in tool because "burn-in" is the technical term for writing information permanently across video frames - and that's exactly what time-stamping does.

DVMP Pro can also stamp (or "burn-in") lots of other info onto AVCHD, HDV and DV video files, and if you want to know more about this see the Burn-in section of the online help and the corresponding options for all of the detailed info.

But in this tutorial we are just keeping it simple and showing you how to time-stamp your files.

There are 5 steps in this tutorial, but you will probably only need to do the first 4 steps once. Then each time you need to time-stamp an AVCHD m2ts or mts file you will only need to do step 5.

1. Check the audio decoder

First of all you must have an AC-3 audio decoder already installed on your PC. This is because the AVCHD files contain audio in the AC-3 format, and unfortunately Windows does not come supplied with an AC-3 audio decoder, so you will have to install one yourself unless you already have an AC-3 decoder installed on your PC.

Note that some AC-3 decoders work better than others, and we only recommend one of these called "AC3Filter" which you can download from

http://ac3filter.net/projects/ac3filter

To begin, check if you already have AC3Filter installed on your PC. So start up DVMP Pro, and from the menu bar choose Tools>Options and click on Decoders in the left-hand pane. The right hand pane now shows you the Decoders page, and near the bottom you will see AC-3 Audio Decoder. If the box shows "AC3Filter" then you are all set and you can skip to the next section of the tutorial.

But if the AC-3 Audio Decoder box shows a different name or "Not selected", then click the Select button on its right. A Select AC-3 Audio Decoder box appears - click the drop-down list and it will show all of the compatible AC-3 decoders that were found on your PC.

If this list contains AC3Filter, then choose it and click OK. You can now skip to the next section of the tutorial.

If the list does not contain AC3Filter, you will have to download it and install it on your PC. Reboot the PC, then repeat the above steps to select AC3Filter.

2. Check the video decoder

If you have Windows 7 on your PC then you can skip this section of the tutorial completely. When you installed DVMP Pro it should have automatically selected the AVCHD video decoder that comes supplied with Windows 7. You can confirm if the decoder was selected correctly by clicking the menu Tools>Options and then clicking Decoders in the left-hand pane. The AVC/H.264 Video Decoder box should show "Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder" - if it doesn't, click the Select button on its right and choose it from the drop-down list and click OK.

If you have Windows Vista or XP, it does not come supplied with a video decoder for the AVCHD format, so you will have to install a suitable video decoder on your PC, or you may be able to use a video decoder that is already installed on your PC. Please see this page for recommendations of video decoders for AVCHD.

You can check which video decoders you already have on your PC by clicking the menu Tools>Options and then clicking Decoders in the left-hand pane. Then click the Select button in the AVC/H.264 Video Decoder box. A Select AVC/H.264 Video Decoder box will appear with a drop-down list containing all of the video decoders for AVCHD on your PC. You should choose one of the recommended video decoders listed here if they appear in the drop-down list. If none of the recommended decoders appear in the list then you can download and install trial versions from the links on the recommendations page.

3. Choose the settings

OK, now we have got the video and audio decoders selected, we can move on to choosing how we want the time and date stamp to appear on the video frames.

Click the menu Tools>Options and click Burn-in in the left-hand pane. The Burn-in options page appears with a set of controls that we will quickly run through.

Skip over the Burn-in Mode - for the AVCHD file type it can not be changed.

In Text Layout, select Advanced.

Basic Text Properties lets you set the brightness of the date/time stamp text and the brightness of the text outline - 100% is brightest white and 0% is darkest black. You can also set how transparent you want the text to be - 0% is completely opaque and 99% is almost completely transparent. To begin with, set them to 90, 10 and 0 respectively.

The set of check-boxes is a list of all the information that can be stamped onto your video. As we are only interested in time-stamping in this tutorial, make sure that Rec time and Rec date are checked and all the other check-boxes are un-checked.

Now click Positioning in the left-hand pane. This page contains a set of controls for setting the position that the date and time stamp text will appear on the video frames. Ignore all of the items on this page except the Rec date and Rec time items.

The X% value gives the horizontal position of the date or time stamped text. 0% is the left hand edge of the frame, increasing to 99% at the right hand edge of the frame. The Y% value gives the vertical position of the text, where 0% is the bottom edge of the frame increasing to 99% just beneath the top edge of the frame.

Set the X% and Y% values for the Rec date and Rec time items - this will be a first estimate at present.

Now click Appearance in the left pane. This page allows you to set the font, text size and bold/italic properties of the stamped text. You can also choose which language you want the date and time to appear.

In the Rec date/time locale drop-down list, choose the required language/locale (or just leave it as your native locale).

Choose the font and Text height - note that the text height is expressed as a percentage of the frame pixel height. Also select bold and/or italic if needed.

If you want fine control over how the date and time text is formatted, check the Custom rec date and Custom rec time boxes, and then type a formatting string into the edit box beneath. The formatting string can contain ordinary text and several formatting codes which control how the elements of the date and time will appear. See this page for a list of these formatting codes and some example formatting strings.

As you type the formatting string, some example text appears beneath showing you what the date or time stamp text will look like, with the formatting codes expanded. Also if you change the font or the Rec date/time locale, the example text will change to show you what the date/time stamp will look like in the chosen font or language.

As we are only interested in time-stamping, just ignore the Custom text box.

4. Choose the output file type

Finally we can now choose what output file type we want. You can choose either WMV or AVI file type - and these have a separate set of options that you can adjust.

WMV uses Microsoft's VC-1 encoder and is useful for producing files for playing back on your PC. It is very processor intensive and can take a while to encode, but requires a lot less CPU power to play back.

AVI is more flexible and allows you to choose between many video compressors that are already installed on your PC. It also allows you to choose "Uncompressed" video for highest quality (but very large file size).

If you select WMV, then choose the Quality setting you want. The greater the value on the slider the better the video quality, and the bigger the output WMV file. If you wish, you can also check the Resize video to box and set a new pixel width and height for the output file - when resizing you will probably also want to check the Preserve the Display Aspect Ratio box. Also, check Include Audio Stream in Output WMV if you want the date/time stamped WMV file to contain audio. Un-check it if you only want it to contain the video frames without any audio.

If you choose to include audio, and the input file has audio in the AC-3 format, then the AC-3 audio is stored unchanged in the WMV file. This means that multi-channel AC-3 is stored with all of the channels preserved. But note that Windows Media Player 11 (and later) may be unable to play WMV files that contain AC-3 audio - this is because it uses "Media Foundation" instead of DirectShow to play WMV files and is therefore unable to use DirectShow AC-3 decoders. For the same reason Windows Movie Maker may be unable to import the WMV file. If you encounter any of these problems, try checking the Use AC-3 Audio Decoder checkbox which will store the audio as PCM instead (or use a different media player).

If you select AVI as the ouput file type, you must now choose a compressor. The Output AVI Compression box allows you to choose what type of compression you want the time-stamped file to have. The time-stamped file will always be an AVI file but it can contain the stamped video using any of a huge range of video compressors.

Click the Select button and a Select Output Video Compressor box will appear that contains a drop-down list of suitable compressors that were found on your PC (it may take a few seconds for the list to be gathered).

Choose a compressor from the list. If you want the best possible quality (always a good idea if you later intend to import the time-stamped AVI file into a video editor or DVD authoring program) then select Uncompressed or Lagarith. You may have to download and install Lagarith if it is not already in the list. "Uncompressed" means that the date/time stamped video frames are NOT re-compressed at all and should contain all of the detail of the original video frames. Lagarith is a lossless compressor which is effectively the same as Uncompressed, but the data is compressed in a way that loses hardly any of the original detail. The Uncompressed and Lagarith files will be very large (Lagarith less so) so make sure you have lots of disk space available - high quality uses lots of disk space! Due to their size they are not suitable for real-time playback on a PC but their excellent quality makes them ideal for importing into video editing and DVD authoring programs.

If you are happy to lose a small amount of detail but end up with smaller stamped files, then choose one of the other compressors in the list. You will need to experiment with these to get your prefered combination of quality and file size. Some compressors have their own quality settings and you can experiment with these. MJPEG compressors can offer a good balance of quality and file size, and "ffdshow tryouts" contains lots of compressors that you may like to try.

For more details about choosing a compressor see this page.

Check Include Audio Stream in Output AVI if you want the date/time stamped AVI file to contain audio. Un-check it if you only want it to contain the video frames without any audio.

Leave the remaining check boxes beneath un-checked for now. But if you encounter problems with the audio or sync of the final time-stamped AVI file, you can try checking the Use AC-3 Audio Decoder checkbox. See the AVI Compressor Options for more details about this.

Now before we do anything else, we must save all of these settings so that they will be remembered next time we start up DVMP Pro. To do this, click General in the left-hand pane, and check the Save all settings as default box. Now you can click the OK button at the bottom of the page.

All the settings have now been saved and we can proceed to time-stamp a file.

5. Time stamp a file

In the previous steps we set the required position and size of the time-stamp text, and chose the type of the output file. So we are now ready to actually time-stamp a file.

To begin with choose a small m2ts (or mts) file to be time-stamped - just a few seconds in length will do. That means you will be able to see the results quicker and decide whether you need to change any of the settings that were discussed above.

Choose the menu File>Open in DVMP Pro and choose your m2ts or mts file. The file should immediately start playing - if it doesn't step through the first section of the tutorial again to make sure that a video and audio decoder is selected in the options.

Click the Pause button beneath the video to stop the file playing.

Click the menu Tools>Burn-in.  A Confirm Settings for Burn-in box will appear which contains the same settings as we already set above. If you wish, you can change any of these now, but the saved settings will be reasserted next time you start DVMP Pro. If you have forgotten what these settings do, look at Choose the Settings above for a reminder.

Click OK to accept the settings.

A file dialog box will appear. Choose the folder and file name that the time-stamped AVI or WMV file will have, and click OK.

The time-stamping now begins. A progress window appears showing its progress. When the time-stamping completes, a Completed box appears. Your time-stamped file has now been created.

Play the stamped AVI or WMV file in a media player of your choice (for example Windows Media Player, VLC or Media Player Classic Home Cinema). If you encounter any problems playing the file, read the notes in the previous section. Also please note that the stamped AVI or WMV file will not play in DVMP Pro because DVMP Pro only plays original AVCHD, HDV and DV files.

Check the positioning of the date and time stamp text, its font and text height. If any of these need to be changed, close the file then return to DVMP Pro and change the required settings (remembering to save them as before) and then run Tools>Burn In again. Repeat this until you have the required results.

Please note that although the AVI file format is immensely useful it does not contain a flag to specify the display aspect ratio. Consequently most media players will assume that it contains square pixels. This means that if your camera uses 1440x1080 frame size, it may play horizontally squeezed (as if it was non-widescreen). Also when importing 1440x1080 time-stamped AVI files into a video editing program you may have to manually set its display aspect ratio to 16:9 (for example in Adobe Premiere you would use its "Interpret footage" option).

The above procedure is useful for time-stamping one file at a time. If you have several files that need to be time-stamped you should instead use the File>Batch processing module which can stamp many files in one go. Here you would select the Burn-in metadata operation. All of the settings are the same as described earlier. For more details see the online help for the Batch Processor.