Embed Time/Date in Time-Lapse Movies

Rob Griffiths at Macworld stumbled upon a very intriguing quirk with iMovie HD 6’s Time-Lapse capture feature. Basically, the options are minimal the first time you do a time-lapse capture. But when you do it again, you have the option of embedding the date and time into the video as text.

I then thought I’d try a slightly longer test recording with a different capture rate, so I again activated the time-lapse drop-down settings dialog. I was very surprised to find that the G5 now had the exact same time-embedding options as those of the MacBook! What’s the trick? It seems that my G5 had never been used to record a time lapse movie before. The simple act of recording one somehow enabled the time-embedding options on the next activation of the settings dialog! Very strange.

Published by Jeff Carlson

Author, photographer, and late-nighter Jeff Carlson writes for outlets such as Popular Photography, DPReview, Creative Pro, and others, and is a contributing editor for TidBITS. He is the author of Take Control of Your Digital Photos; The Photographer's Guide to Luminar AI, Take Control of Apple Watch, and Take Control of Your Digital Storage, among many other titles. View all posts by Jeff Carlson