CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ffmpegtimestampoverlay
Denio Mariz
Denio Mariz

Reputation: 1205

FFmpeg for marking time video based on a reference date

I am trying to mark a timestamp in a video using drawtext filter. FFmpeg easily marks timestamps based on localtime, gmtime or even PTS. However, I want to assign a reference time (start time) for the timestamp in order to represent the time the video was recorded (not encoded).

Reading the documentation, I found that option basetime can be used for this purpose. However it seems that is not working or I am missing something.

The command line I am using is:

ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -filter_complex drawtext="fontfile=/tmp/UbuntuMono-B.ttf: fontsize=36: fontcolor=yellow: box=1: [email protected]: text='Wall Clock Time\: %{gmtime\:%Y-%m-%d %T}': basetime=1456007118" output.mp4

By using basetime=1456007118, it was expected the start time was set to '02/20/2016 20:25:18' since 1456007118 is the UTC time for that time and date:

date -d '02/20/2016 20:25:18' +"%s" # format MM/DD/AAAA hh:mm:ss
1456007118

However, no error is issued by FFmpeg and the video is marked with current GMT, ignoring basetime option.

Any hint? Thanks.

Complete information about FFmpeg version and output is:

ffmpeg -y -i /home/denio/Videos/Interstellar_2014_Trailer_4_5.1-1080p-HDTN.mp4 -filter_complex drawtext="fontfile=/tmp/UbuntuMono-B.ttf: fontsize=36: fontcolor=yellow: box=1: [email protected]: text='Wall Clock Time\: %{gmtime\:%Y-%m-%d %T}': basetime=1470226363" /tmp/x.mp4 
ffmpeg version 3.1.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2016 the FFmpeg developers
  built with gcc 5.3.1 (Ubuntu 5.3.1-14ubuntu2.1) 20160413
  configuration: --enable-libxavs --enable-bzlib --enable-libfaac --enable-libfreetype --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libspeex --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxvid --enable-zlib --enable-x11grab --enable-static --enable-pthreads --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-version3 --disable-ffserver --enable-libgsm --enable-librtmp --enable-libvpx --enable-libschroedinger --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopenjpeg
  libavutil      55. 28.100 / 55. 28.100
  libavcodec     57. 48.101 / 57. 48.101
  libavformat    57. 41.100 / 57. 41.100
  libavdevice    57.  0.101 / 57.  0.101
  libavfilter     6. 47.100 /  6. 47.100
  libswscale      4.  1.100 /  4.  1.100
  libswresample   2.  1.100 /  2.  1.100
  libpostproc    54.  0.100 / 54.  0.100
...
...

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4231

Answers (1)

Gyan
Gyan

Reputation: 93319

I see the basetime in the source code, but not in the web documentation, so not sure how it's supposed to work.

You can instead use the pts function.

ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -vf "drawtext=fontfile=/tmp/UbuntuMono-B.ttf:
                            fontsize=36:fontcolor=yellow:
                            box=1:[email protected]:
                            text='Wall Clock Time\: %{pts\:gmtime\:1456007118}'"
   output.mp4

You may need to reset PTS (setpts=PTS-STARTPTS) before the drawtext.

Upvotes: 4

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