The VideoLAN Forums

First, I love VLC, its the most flexible, least invasive, most portable, dependable thing out there.

I'm a filmmaker (documentaries), any serious documentary makers do transcriptions, for example I have about 200 (will be 250 hours) of HDV for the documentary I am currently working on. I need to get it transcribed, that means someone (usually lots of someones) have to view all of the footage, and write down and record everything said and done in the documentary so that it can be put into a database and looked up (nobody remembers what happened and what was said in 250 hours of taping), when I go to put together a final edit and build the film. There are many thousands of documentary makers, and everyone is not going to HDV. Right now, the only thing I can do is spend about 1000 hours (really! about 4-8 hours per hour on a quad MAC) transcoding what I have into another format with timecodes turned on. This is insane, I would gladly pay, pay, pay, not to have to do this. Not to even mention that it makes the MAC unusable for editing during this time as its transcoding. If you guys can do this in the next spin, you have no idea what a boon it would be to filmmakers like me.. studios can afford this, independent makers like myself cannot.

BTW: I didn't see anyway to turn on visible timecodes in the picture in regular NTSC, is there a way?

Thanks Much.. Please if you need this also, SAY SO!

What do you exactly want ?
What would be the thing would be the best for you ?

We are no filmakers, so this is unclear for most of us.

I think i understand what he is says.

He would like to display the exact time and or frame number over the image when playing so that somebody can easily pause the video, then read the timecode, and copy/paste the timecode in a database.
The software he usually uses (on a mac) cannot read hdv files.

Some professional HDV cameras record some more detailed informations about each frame within the hdv files such as date and time of the shot, exposure, sensitivity, gain, focus and zoom parameters etc... but i don't know if he would like to have those informations too or if he just would like to have filename and frame time / number.

Oki. Do you want it on top of the screen or in the controller is enough ?

I think on top of the screen is the standard way of doing it.
But having a copy/paste ability would be a cool feature... and why not an "auto copy to clipboard" function when pressing the pause button ?

Found somebody else asking about the same thing in an older topic :

VLC is a packet video player, it should count frames and have the option of displaying hh:MM:SS:FF, based upon the framerate dictated by the file.

Agreed, I would like to see SMPTE Timebase Code format available as suggested above. This would be a usefull feature.

Oki, I would prefer to do it in the controller... not in the video... Pasting it could be cool, yes.

Good afternoon,

I dont understand this forum?
If you follow the dates it seems to go backward so I ask JBK my question :

Automatic copy of the time code is precisely what I am looking for, is this implemented in the last VLC 2.0.5?

How can I use it

Thanks a lot for your answers!

Loïc