Adding Time to the recording - how?

[AonMaster]

Hello, the program is nice.
I need to put a timestamp (date and time) onto a USB webcam stream. No youtube posting, just use OBS to record video to my hard drive.

Searched this forum a littlle, but did not find any suggestion.
Please help.

 

[konsolenritter]

If you searched in the resources section of this forum for something like "clock" you should have found like that:

Time and Date Overlay updated

Clock.html GitHub File Download the HTML File In OBS add a Browser Source Select local file Browse to the clock.html file adjust the height and width accordingly You can edit the clock.html in the notepad app on windows, any other text editor...

obsproject.com

 

[koala]

Very simple text timestamp script plugin:

OBS Lua - Datetime digital clock

This script transforms a text source into a digital clock. The datetime format is configurable and uses the same syntax than the Lua os.date() call, i.e.: %a abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Wed) %A full weekday name (e.g., Wednesday) %b...

obsproject.com

 

[AonMaster]

Oh, is it so complicated! I expected some menu inside the OBS software like 'add a clock overlay' with some format setting, but not downloading from Github and using text editors...

 

[konsolenritter]

Don't be frustrated that way. :)
OBS is a powerful production system. It's not a "just-one-click-away-fits-it-all" solution. There is good documentation and examples regarding (nearly) every resource.

 

[Abraham190137]

A hacky solution I came up with is to run a Python script that opens a window and writes the exact time to that window, then add that as a window capture to the OBS scene.

Python Script:
import tkinter as tk
import time

def update_time():
current_time = time.strftime('%H:%M:%S.') + str(int(time.time() % 1 * 1000)).zfill(3)
time_label.config(text=current_time)
time_label.after(1, update_time)

# Create the main window
window = tk.Tk()
window.title("Current Time")
window.geometry("200x50")

# Create a label to display the time
time_label = tk.Label(window, font=("Helvetica", 24))
time_label.pack(pady=10)

# Start updating the time
update_time()

# Start the main loop
window.mainloop()