Capturing image metadata from the camera to imprint a date and time stamp on your surveillance video requires a few extra steps and third-party software.

HERE’S HOW TO DO IT. 

At least once a month I get an email from aspiring or current private investigators asking how our firm attaches rolling time and date stamp subtitles to our surveillance video. It’s one of those things that should be simple and easy but isn’t, which is why so many people ask the question.

As such, I figured I’d write an article to explain not only how to imprint your surveillance video with time and date stamps but also to outline how to authenticate this crucial data for legal purposes.

Change in Technology

Adding time and date stamps to surveillance video wasn’t always the massive pain in the @** that it is today. What changed was the transition to digital video from analog 8mm video tapes like Hi8 and Video8. This “evolution” exponentially improved the quality of footage, but manufacturers opted to sacrifice the feature that “burned” the time and date stamp directly onto the video file.

It’s interesting to note that home security cameras still offer this “burn” feature for time and date stamps, which makes sense. But losing that capability in newer hand-held cameras forced investigators to find some kind of workaround.