How do I find the date a video was taken?

Question

I have a Panasonic HD camcorder and I downloaded a bunch of videos to my computer directly without using the Panasonic software. The videos downloaded fine, but I can't tell when the videos were taken. When I use the Panasonic software, it renames the files with the date and time it was taken.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use the software for this batch of videos and now the videos have been deleted from the camera. Is there any metadata on a video file that has the date and time the video was taken? If so, how would I view it on a Mac?

Thanks

Answer 1

The mediainfo command line tool may help you:

mediainfo --Full ~/MONTAGE/danser/DSC_3246.MOV
...
Encoded date                             : UTC 2012-09-12 17:50:08
Tagged date                              : UTC 2012-09-12 17:50:08
File last modification date              : UTC 2012-09-12 16:50:08
File last modification date (local)      : 2012-09-12 18:50:08
Encoded date                             : UTC 2012-09-12 17:50:08
Tagged date                              : UTC 2012-09-12 17:50:08
Encoded date                             : UTC 2012-09-12 17:50:08
Tagged date                              : UTC 2012-09-12 17:50:08

It comes in ubuntu with the mediainfo packcages:

sudo apt-get install mediainfo

It seems available for mac too: http://mediainfo.en.softonic.com/mac