By Martel Electronics · November 10, 2026 · Manual transcription and review

A video can have two useful times: its playback position and the date and time the recorded event occurred. Martel can insert either, or both. To use the recording clock accurately, establish a reference at a moment you can verify. You do not have to begin at the first frame.

This is a manual reference workflow. Martel does not infer the camera clock from the day you downloaded the file, and the clock on your transcription computer does not establish when the event happened.

Choose a reference you can explain

Open the recording and pause at a clearly identifiable point. A readable clock displayed in the picture can be useful, provided you know what it represents. An independently verified recording log can also supply the reference. Record where your information came from in your working notes. A camera display may itself be incorrectly set; entering it accurately does not prove that the camera was synchronized to an authoritative clock.

If the date is unknown, do not invent one merely to enable a calendar timestamp. Keep using video-position timestamps while you obtain the missing information. They still give another reviewer a practical way to find the passage in the same file.

Enter the date and time at the paused position

1. Pause at the known moment and select Set Recording Time.
2. Enter the recording date and time corresponding to that position, using the format shown in the dialog.
3. Enter a known UTC offset or time-zone reference when available. Leave an unknown zone unspecified.
4. Save the reference, then choose a recording-time or combined timestamp format.
5. Insert a test timestamp and compare it with your reference before continuing.

The saved reference contains both the date/time you entered and the video position where you entered it. The calculation is entered recording time plus the difference between the current and reference video positions. Playing more slowly does not change that relationship.

A worked example away from the beginning

Suppose the picture at video position 00:02:00 corresponds to November 10 at 00:12:00. Set that point as the reference. At video position 00:05:30, three minutes and thirty seconds have passed since the reference, so the recording time is November 10 at 00:15:30. It does not matter whether you are transcribing at 9 a.m. or 2 p.m.

Rewind to 00:01:30 and the calculated clock becomes 00:11:30. This is why a reference can be established after the first frame: the offset works in either direction within a continuous recording segment.

Check another point before trusting the whole clip

Compare a second known moment farther into the file. If it disagrees, investigate whether the source was edited, the camera clock jumped, or the initial reference was wrong. One reference assumes a continuous relationship between media position and recording time. It cannot reconstruct a section removed during editing.

For footage with a clock discontinuity, document the boundary and reset the reference for the next segment. Resetting affects future inserted timestamps; review existing text separately. A reference belongs to its recording, so opening a different file should begin with its own timing information. Keep the source filename in the transcript header to make that association clear.

Before you hand off the transcript

Include the source filename, the reference point, the entered date/time, and whether the zone is known. Keep a video-position reference alongside the clock when another reviewer needs to navigate the same file. That small explanation is more useful than a clock value with an unexplained origin.