topic Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing in Visualization

Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Anonymous — Thu, 11 May 2023 12:10:11 GMT

Hi there

Im having trouble with my Sun Studies, the Location, Date & Time tag that has always been "attached" to the top left corner of the movie frames in previous versions of Archicad

Since upgrading to Archicad 10 (from Archicad 8 ) any sun studies I generate are tagged with the Location, but NOT the Date and Time... wierd?

Attached is a screenshot of 2 movies, the one on the left is from Archicad 8, with the full tag, the right is from ACAD 10, with just the location tag

can anybody help me get the full tag back? Is it a setting somewhere (Ive looked in all the logical places, Sun settings, PR settings)?

I cant find any other posts on this topic so Im wondering if its a bug?

Any help would be appreciated

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Link — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:21:44 GMT

There have been many problems with the latest version of Quicktime. What version are you running?

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:58:50 GMT

hadnt occured to me it may be a Quicktime issue, Im running Quicktime 7.1.3

Ive tried a whole bunch of comparisons to try and isolate the issue - Using a test project (one slab and a few walls) I can generate sun studies (using 3D and Photorendering windows) in Archicad 8.1 with the full tag info showing, generating a sun study in Archicad 10 (from the same project file, same camera angle, same 3D and photorendering settings) creates identical movies but with only the location tag showing?

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Link — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 01:37:09 GMT

Can't say I have heard this one before. QT 7.1.3 should work fine, but definitely do not update it or iTunes at this stage!

Are you sure you have the latest version of 10 installed? Check in your help menu.

Until someone else comments, I would suggest maybe looking at the difference between your Sun Study Settings, including your compression settings.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Stress Co_ — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:04:25 GMT

Running Quicktime 7.1.5,
I too get the location tag..... but no date/time

EDIT: ..... Location/date/time all show in AC9.

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Anonymous — Thu, 17 May 2007 19:40:00 GMT

Ditto.

QT 7.1.5. everything else fine. No day or time in AC10 Sun Study. We back-save the project to AC9, do the sunstudy, and then re-open back in 10...

It's definitely a step backwards for AC10. Hope they fix it in 11. Or sooner!

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Stress Co_ — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:47:43 GMT

I had to do a sun study today, and noticed the time and date stamp is back.
Not sure if it was the updated AC or Quicktime.

AC 11 (1200 US Full)
Quicktime 7.4.5

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Paul King — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:49:37 GMT

Hi _ I am having this problem in AC 13x64, with QuickTime 7.65. Are there any ways known to reactivate this essential feature?

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Stress Co_ — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:42:33 GMT

I just did a few sun studies in AC13.... and thought the date/time/location stamp was gone again.
That is until I viewed the movie in "full screen".
The stamp is there. You can just make it out behind the translucent "window bar" (using QuickTime Player 10.0).
Is it the same on a PC?

EDIT Screen shot is a "window" view. The stamp is not obscured in Full screen.

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Paul King — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:50:28 GMT

Hi - the solution for me was that QuickTime player has to be your movie viewer - the time stamp is not visible in other .mov players for some reason.

Doesn't seem to be a quicklime player version 10 for PC, so can't verify your masking issue, but under 7.5.6, the time stamp is not obscured whether in full screen or windowed mode.
Wish there was a way to reposition it & change size/font etc.!

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 17:00:08 GMT

There have been various queries about changing the characteristics of the Sun Study caption. This is how I do it...The principles are those for closed captions for movies (subtitles, etc), which some bright person at Graphisoft has commandeered.
These settings are based on a sun-study frame-size of 800x600...
Open the sun-study in Quicktime 7. Export the caption(File/Export): choose "text to text". In Options select "Show Text, Descriptors and Time" and "Show time relative to start of Movie".
Edit the .txt file in Wordpad or whatever. Thus: switch font to, say, Arial; the {plain} definition can be replaced with Italic, Bold , etc. {Size:24} or whatever. The two colour boxes {textColor:...,...,...},{backColor:.,.,. }go from 65534 down: 65534,0,0 = bright red: 0,65534,0 = bright green; 0,0,65534 = blue, etc. These are useful if you want the date and time in a clean box -- see below. As to {justify: Left, Right or Center}(note US spelling) -- I tend to leave it on Left and move it around later;. Save the file, (if you want, with a different file name so that you can fiddle without fear) ANSI encoded.

Open in Quicktime (Scroll to "All files"). Select All. Copy. Open your Sun Study. You can turn off the existing caption by going to Window/Show Movie Properties, but you don't have to. Add to Movie (Ctrl, Alt, V). Horrors: if you haven't changed the text box size you see a white screen.
Open Window/Show Movie Properties (Ctrl+ J): Highlight your new Text Track (probably Track 2). Open the Visual Settings tab. Find Transparency. Choose the setting you want -- I quite like Premultiplied Black if I'm keying a black caption. However Offset takes the caption left or down; if you offset down by more than the overall frame height of the study itself you will create a caption box outside the normal picture area.
If you don't want to do that the function Transparency: Dither gives you a nice box over your picture. Make sure the layer number is low enough for you to see the caption in this case. The other Transparency settings are trial and error, and the result depends on your text and background colour settings. I always click the high quality box, but I've never noticed much difference. Close the box. Play the movie, Save it with a different file name. Then read the Quicktime guide for more options.
That really is about all I can tell you. I hope it's useful...I think there must be something about it in the QT manual, though that was written years ago and is possibly out-of-date

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Anonymous — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:51:18 GMT

I have also noticed over the last few years that this date and time option comes and goes.

Now in AC 15 it seems to be gone again. Has anybody noticed why? Is there now (finally) and setting somewhere to choose whether or not this shows on the movie?

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

adamsb — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 17:08:45 GMT

It looks like this topic kind of trailed off...but I'd like to bring it up again. The basic point of creating a sun study and showing it to your client is for them to be able to pause the movie and understand what time of day that point of the movie is showing.

It seems as though this time/date "stamp" has been removed, but I'm hoping that it's just hidden?

Can somebody help? Thanks!

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 18:43:58 GMT

Just spent a bit of time trying to find workarounds to share... and hit a brick wall.

From 17, I can see the time (on a Mac) only if I open the generated movie in Quicktime 7. If I open it in Quicktime 10, the time does not show.

I thought an easy workaround would be to program a GDL clock object to change the displayed time based on the sun-study time and just include that clock in the sun study. No go though.

If a clock object is set to synchronize to 'real time' - it just reads the computers time/date. There is a GDL Global called GLOB_PROJECT_DATE which in principal would let us retrieve the sun study's date and time and display it... but this global returns all zeroes from the 3D window. I verified that the concept would work by setting the hour to GLOB_SUN_ALTITUDE, which did result int (bogus of course) changing hour hands for each image. So, this would be possible if GS would update the GLOB_PROJECT_DATE variable. As it is now, a solution is 100% in GS's hands as it seems there is nothing we can do on our own, short of using an old version of Quicktime.

Karl

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

adamsb — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 18:54:07 GMT

Wow, impressive research Karl! It does seem that this is one of the simpler things for GS to fix. Let's hope it is part of the next hotfix!

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Karl Ottenstein — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 21:44:04 GMT

I've reported this to Graphisoft. We'll see what they say...

In the meantime, the QuickTime 7 player for Mac can be downloaded here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL923?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

It will not replace the Quicktime 10 player. You'll need to right-click the MOV and choose to Open With... Quicktime 7

The QT 7 download for Windows is here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL837

I have not tested to see if this adds QT 7 or replaces QT 10 on a Windows machine. Anyone have both?

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Jan 2014 19:50:30 GMT

Thank you for the instructions! Very helpful.

FYI, once you have QuickTime 7 the file can be saved out as a .mp4 that will retain the time stamp even if viewed in QuickTime 10. I used "Export for Web" and "Desktop" with good results.

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Karl Ottenstein — Tue, 28 Jan 2014 21:24:36 GMT

BarbaraA wrote:
FYI, once you have QuickTime 7 the file can be saved out as a .mp4 that will retain the time stamp even if viewed in QuickTime 10. I used "Export for Web" and "Desktop" with good results.

Great tip! Thanks!

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Jan 2015 01:24:53 GMT

My experience with the 'problem'...
The location / date / time doesn't show in QuickTime (v10.4) when producing the Sun Study in ArchiCAD 18 as an MP4 movie file.
If produced as a QuickTime movie file (.mov) file type the location / date / time is visible by turning on English subtitles in the View menu in QuickTime.

Re: Sun Study Problem: Location, date & time tag missing

Stress Co_ — Tue, 27 Jan 2015 04:41:42 GMT

Dave wrote:
If produced as a QuickTime movie file (.mov) file type the location / date / time is visible by turning on English subtitles in the View menu in QuickTime.

Excellent find.
Thanks for posting it Dave.