Time and Date Display on video (Timestamp)

[J_Benson]

Preface: The property management company I work for purchased 8 Arlo cameras to set up around the apartment complex I manage. 

The current system does not provide an easy way to tell the exact time a specific time that an image within a video clip was captured, nor does it provice an easy way to navigate to a specific time within a video. The only mention of an exact time is the time listed when the camera began recording each clip. To find out when a still image within the video was captured, you must mentally add up the amount of time you are into a video and the start time of the clip. Example: I want to find the time 6:32 within a video clip. The video clip states that it starts at 6:30, so I navigate two minutes into the video.

My suggestion is to either add a time and date stamp to the video recording, in an unobtrusive area of the video, perhaps customizeable to which corner it appears in. Alternatively, rather than the time slider at the bottom of the clip playback stating the time into the video clip, it displays the real time the video was taken. Current setup for video playback begins at 00:00:00 and advances to 00:02:00, if video length is set to 120 seconds. Instead, it could start at the real time the video capture was taken and continue along at real time. Example: Video starts at 06:30:27 and the slider at the bottom of the playback advances to 06:32:27.

This would aid in finding a specific time in which an event reportedly occurred, as well as serve for better evidence when assessing a charge against a tenant for littering, as you could print out a screenshot of the video with a timestamp and attach it to a document for issuing a charge. It would also aid in police investigations or as evidence when in litigation. Police often come to my office to request video footage of a certain time and date, and this would assist them. We also have a problem with illegal dumping of mattresses and furniture, in which case we would need a timestamped image to present to police.

Thank you for reading this suggestion, and I hope that a timestamp could be implemented as an optional feature for the Arlo camera system in the future. 

J. Benson,
Ullrich Real Estate

[WatchingYou]

Would you believe that there are 5 pages of requests for date and time stamping dating back to September last year.

Still no one listening.

[theberber]

Do Netgear/arlo actually monitor community messages?

How about we keep sending requests to support@arlo address demanding date and time stamp and remote sensors as i have discovered these are the two most requested additions - and sensible ones at that. Both I realised i needed within a few days of owning the system i bought.

I feel a bit conned to be honest by all the 'cool' marketing and perhaps fake reviews, as i did do my research - yet now stuck with what i have bought.

[JamesC]

The Arlo development team periodically reviews the most popular ideas in the Idea Exchange. As ideas are being reviewed, their status will be updated.

The popularity of an idea is based on the number of Kudos the idea receives. I encourage community users to continue supporting their favorite ideas by adding Kudos. This is the best way to show the development team that the future implementation of a feature is important to the community.

Thank you for your contribution,

JamesC

[WatchingYou]

Kudos my ass... This is not meant to be a popularity contest, its a legal requirement when submitting video for evidence in a court of law. 

The arlo system should have had this facility from day one and the product should never have been put on the market without it.

You are obviously not concerned that a security camera system sold to the general public is next to useless when it comes to fighting crime.

SHAME ON YOU NETGEAR, SHAME ON YOU.

[pagvan229]

Great respond watching you. I been waiting for over a year on this.

[vitali108]

Any update on when the feature to be implemented?

[theberber]

Fellow contributors.

I visited my Solicitor the other day and dropped off a USB with all my (to date) downloaded motion detection images from my Arlo. I explained that these were recored in Epoch time expecting 'savvy lawyers' to be more clued up on this than i was....Alas no, I got a confused look and comment - never heard of that. Then advised it would of course take additional (chargeable) time to convert the times on each video. I of course could not pre - prepare this as how would I prove my times were genuine once i swap the epoch code for a GMT time? as its not indelibly stamped within the video stream.

Please kudos this post if you are equally frustrated as it will then be taken seriously by the Netgear team.

Also please add more comments on this subject heading for it to be noticed

thanks all

we will get there

[hokeysmoke]

The metadata in the files contain the GMT (also known as UTC) time.  Here is the data from one of my cameras as read by some freeware (Mediainfo).  This is much more difficult to change (or fake) than the file name.

[theberber]

hokeysmoke

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thankyou, that is the most useful advice ive had. ive downloaded it and it works. This kind of application advice shoud be inlcuded in the instruction manual or available as options on the FAQ's 

take note Netgear

[b00573d]

Such a simple idea and Netgear cant implement this?!