How can I get the original capture timestamp from my home movie files:: AVI and MPG4?

Question

I have over a TB of home movies with horrible file names. Finding what you want is impossible. I would like to rename all files to the time they were originally recorded (not t

Answer 1

I can’t talk about DVD, but the Digital Video (DV) codec does indeed store time and date (as set in the camera) on each single frame!

For Linux, programs like dvgrab handle those timestamps, for Windows I believe a tool named dvdate.exe does.

DV video can be stored in AVI containers (.avi), raw (.dv or .dif) and QuickTime (.mov). But not all AVIs are DV. 60min of DV video is about 13GB. – If your files are smaller, they are probably already converted to other codecs and the timestamps are lost.