Timecode in AVI-Files

Nealeh, thank your for your reply.

I did what you suggested. Unfortunately I still have the same problem. I does not matter whether I look at the old AVI-Files (captured from myr camera using Pinnacle), AVI-Files captured with Premiere Elements before or after your suggestion. I still can't see the original Timecode. There is always just the TC starting at 00:00:00.00.

I think Pinnacle puts these TC-a into the SCN-File which comes to each AVI-File captured by this software. It seems to me that the AVI-File doesn't contain the absolute TC-information. But this would mean that in PE the absolute TC will not be available. On the other hand I can't imagine that this is true. How would you find common scenes recorded with two or more cameras?

I was searching for a while this forum and also googling all around. I did not find any hint to solve this problem. But I can't imagine that nobody is interested in the TC. So either I have a unique installation which suprresses the TC or my intellectual capacity is too poor to see the clue.

What is wrong with my AVI-File? What else can I do to get the TC (including the date/time of the recording)?

No, I did not just look the CTI. I have been searching in the properties auf each AVI-File: the 'Frame-Counter' always starts at 0 - even when I capture a new MiniDV using PE. And even when I put the preference to split the file by Timecode during the import: it always starts at 0 - after each split.

I will have a look at the Files with other tools. But after all I have read I think there will be the same situation. I will let you know.

Thanks Neale and Bill,

I was 'experimenting' with a couple of programs installed 'by default' on my PC. Importing a MiniDV from my Camera or an existing AVI-File did not fit my needs. Either they did not show at all this Timeocde (e.g. Power Director) or the only format was MPEG.

So I followed Bill's suggestion : I downloaded the freeware-version of ScenAnalyzer. This tool shows all I want to see: Date/Time of the recording and  computes the duration of each. And it also shows the Timecode starting at 0 at the beginning of the MiniDV or AVI-File (Maybe I will purchase the actual version).

I think I can deal with this solution: I will be able to find corresponding scenes recorded with two (or more) different cameras. But there is still enough backbraking work left to synchronize corresponding scenes perfectly in PrE ...

Thanks for your help!!!

Nicomil

This is just a late 'progress report' to tell a bit of my experiences:

ScenAlyzer is a simple to use program to split up DV-AVI-Files (by Datestamp or Optical change). What I like very much is: the output file name is composed by a base name and either the number of the sequence or, and that is really good, the date/time of the datestamp.

I wrote an Email to the owner of the software to ask if the developmend and support of this software will continue. Unfortunately I never got an answer. Nevertheless I will use ScenAnalyzer mainly to add the recording date to the filename.

DVMP is a much more sophisticated program which allows to split an AVI-File by datestamp or optical. There are a couple of manipulation possibilities, e.g. change the beginning of the datestamp of a sequence. I couldn't test this feature since I have only the demo version where functionnality is restricted.

Sending an Email to the DVMP-Team was in vain since I did not get any answer.

After all my tests I finally (!) had the idea to split up my AVI-files using PRE 8. I distributed the sequence in the timeline on PC as 'Uncompressed Microsoft AVI'. That worked fine. Except: splitting this way removed the datestamp (I realized that only when I wanted to add this datestamp to the filename using ScenAnalyzer, but the pogram couldn't find the datestamp).

So I wanted to split up my AVI-File using the File -> Export. But I could not do anything since the Export-Function is in gray - I can't start it.

This question I will ask in a new thread: "File export function is grey / inactive".

Colin, you are right: it is possible to modify metadata (Timecode or Date/Time) with the demo version of DVMP. I mixed up the extraction of metadata and modifying since trying to extract metadata comes up with the message 'this feature is only available in the FULL version of DVMP Pro'.