Hello everyone.

I'm new to this business and I am in need of knowledge! I have a GL2 that will be used for Legal Video Depositions. I believe Ineed to put a Time date minute second generator on the separate VHS recorder that I use for my tape.

My questions are:
A. Do I have to put a time date generator in line of the VCR or can the GL@ somehow have the Time date stamp record on the VHS tape recorder I plug in to?

B. I also want to burn CD's off of the Digital tape in the GL2. Is there any way to get a time date stamp on the digital GL2 tape that is displayed when played?


Thanks,

Glen G

The GL2 can burn the time/date right onto the mini DV tape. If you're then going to copy the footage to VHS tape, or hook a VHS recorder to it for real time recording, it should copy the characters to VHS.

In camera mode, go to the menu, system, then turn "Character Rec" to "on."

If you output the digital tape to CD or DVD, the chacters should show up there too.

One of the new consumer DVD burners would be a great way to archive footage. You could store 2 hours of video on a DVD (two GL2 tapes) at high quality and copy it direct without a computer.

Hello Glen,

We recently had a rather lengthy thread (http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7393&highlight=time+code) on this topic. Paul Tauger, one of your fellow members who's also a practicing attorney, has also written an excellent article on video legal depositions (http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/business/tauger1.php) on the main part of this site.

Unfortunately, since the GL2 can't burn full date and time simultaneously to the image you will need some external generator.

Tom,

Thanks for the info on the time stamp. The problem now is that the GL2 time display only shows time in hours and minutes, for the legal video I need it to display seconds as well. Any Ideas on this one?

Thanks Again,
Glen

You'll need a timecode generator. Horita (http://www.horita.com/smptetimecode.htm) is a leader in economical field generators.

Since you can just change the date/time on the GL2 itself, using the GL2 to generate the time on the tape is probably not going to be as authoritative as using some kind of external generator.