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

[hokeysmoke]

Not sure how simple it would be to implement in the wireless cameras.  The cameras would need to know the current time and be able to create an overlay on the image with localized text prior to encoding the video stream; neither of which is needed for the current camera function.  If the cameras don't know the time or do not have the ability to create an overlay, the streams would need to be decoded and then re-encoded (with generation loss and additional delay) with the overlay on Netgear's servers.  People already complain about the lag, and it would get worse.

Without being architected in from the start, I doubt a feature like this will be developed on the current generation hardware.

[peanut1983]

I have a 3 camera system, and I am happy with it for monitoring the house when I am not there. However as for evidential use if something was to happen, unfortunatly without a time and date stamp, the footage is potentially useless. The file name is not good enough as anyone can simply change a file name to anything they want. It needs to have a date and time stamp imbedded in the footage that cannot be manually changed so that any it can be used evidentially. 

I would not want to think about having to consider a alternative CCTV system with date and time stamp already set up, as I am happy with the arlo system overal and the flexibility it offers.  I want to know that if something did happen then there would be no issues with the footage captured in passing onto police/ being used in court. I work in retail security and one of the things police ask when collecting footage is, is the time accurate. Arlo unfortunatly does not even have date or time so i do strongly encourage this feature to be implemented.

[BonBon16]

Hello Arlo development team,

   When downloading the recorded video from the cloud, its nam is a serie of number. It has no meaning to end-users.

   Could you change it to a format like ArloCameraID_YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS format ?

Thank you very much.

[TomMac]

This has come up before... best to add kudos to the topic here ; https://community.netgear.com/t5/Idea-Exchange/idb-p/arlo-idea-exchange

BTW, some software/apps read it correct in date/ time but that number your looking at is Epoch Time

If you want to convert, you can also go here to give human time ; http://www.epochconverter.com/

[hokeysmoke]

If you are familiar with Python, I have written a script to convert the epoch filename into one that reflects the actual date and time.  See below.

# timestamp_arlo - a utility to rename arlo downloaded files to human readable date/time format
#
# Developed under Python 2.7.10
# This script is open-source; please use and distribute as you wish.
# There are no warranties; please use at your own risk.
#

import os
import glob
import datetime

#list files that are mp4
files = glob.glob('*.mp4')

#iteratively look at all listed files
for file in files:

    #rename only those file names that look like epoch timestamps
    if file.startswith("14"):
        
        #divide timestamp (first 13 characters) by 1000 to remove the milliseconds that Python does not understand
        sec = int(file [0:13]) / 1000

        #convert epoch timestamp to human readable, OS compatible, date and time
        timestamp = str(datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(sec).strftime('%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S'))
        
        #define the new name as the readable date/time plus the extension
        new_name = os.path.join(timestamp + ".mp4")

        #rename the file with the new name
        os.rename(file, new_name)
        
#repeat above with jpg files
files = glob.glob('*.jpg')
for file in files:
    if file.startswith("14"):    
        sec = int(file [0:13]) / 1000
        timestamp = str(datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(sec).strftime('%Y-%m-%d_%H%M%S'))
        new_name = os.path.join(timestamp + ".jpg")
        os.rename(file, new_name)

[jwg]

This python script is awesome! Thanks for creating it. I just converted 300 files in about 3 seconds to human readable date/times. Now if I only had a way to automatically login and download files. 

[hokeysmoke]

 There are a few user-developed Python scripts for auto-downloading clips (unsupported by Netgear).  One thread is below, and I believe jguerdat has the script that most people use.  I use a slightly modified version to download all of my library videos.

https://community.netgear.com/t5/Buying-Options-Tips/Script-for-Automatic-Download-of-Clips/td-p/100...

[WilW]

This system is useless without a time and date stamp ON THE VIDEO.  The filename in epoch time means nothing.  If this were are real security system, it would have it.  When are you going to add it? I see many requests but NO response from netgear.  Pitiful.

[Naugs1980]

Despite having a very fast internet speed (Xfinity, tested on speedtest.net 79.15 Mbps down - 25.14 Mbps up) and the camera being within 20ft of our router, I still get a delay.  While watching live I get a delay of anywhere from 5 seconds to 2 minutes.  Obviously, the 5 seconds is no big deal but, the 2 minutes is a REALLY big deal.  If someone was stealing my bike, like in the Arlo promotional video, my bike would be long gone by the time I saw the person taking it.  The real issue with this delay, for me in particular, is that I was hoping to use Arlo as a baby monitor --a 2 minute delay on a baby monitor is an eternity.  Having a clock on the display may help me see if I'm experiencing a delay and if so how much of a delay.  My friend has a Nest camera that he used as a baby monitor and he said the clock on the screen let him always know if the camera was showing a true realtime image or if was delayed or even frozen.  Please let me know if this is a posibility otherwise I will just be forced to return Arlo and get a different camera to use as a baby monitor.  Maybe the Nest camera is just the better way to go for this type of use.  

P.S. I know the Arlo Q is not designed to be a baby monitor per se, but before you dismiss it as being used as one, I'm sure I don't have to tell you what a HUGE market that is --Just saying. 

[JamesC]

The Arlo development team routinely reviews posts in the Arlo Idea Exchange to assess which features the community would like to see implemented. We greatly appreciate the communities contribution and will keep the status of this idea updated as we get new information on it's potential implementation. Thank you for posting your idea!

Thank you,

JamesC