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Can we perhaps hold the triumphalism …?
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[Bill Davis] “I just believe that since ALL technology evolves, it’s strange that we must carve out and freeze TC with its functionally exactly as it was when I was a teenager.”
Because it’s just as valid today as it was then. If it didn’t exist today, someone would end up inventing it to provide the same function. At this point no one has developed a better technology for video media files and that includes Apple.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
This is an interesting thread. Bill, I have to confess I don’t exactly understand what you’re arguing for.
Can we pause the conversation on HOW exactly to do timecode, and back up a little bit to the conversation on WHAT timecode needs to do?
In other words, what problems do we hope to solve by coding our media with time?
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Sure. To my thinking, the fundamental purpose of timecode (however you choose to express it) is synchronization.
Movies had standardized on a frame cadence before TV – but TV was always a global hodgepodge.
The industry has always needed the cadence of video to have a relationship to the passage of clock time as the world measures that. In TV, programs have a duration – and start at the top and bottom of the hour. Commercials are sold in :30 and 60 sec. slices of time.
Then there were the engineering necessities of the dawn of the TV era. Sadly, differing international power standards meant no global cadence standard has ever existed. Black and white shoehorned color in and so we got our weird fractional cadences (29.97 and 23.98 etc) for good engineering reasons but terrible clock synchronization capabilities including sub flavors of TC like drop and non-drop numbering schemes JUST to keep the numbers from screwing things up. So that’s the system being guarded. Functional and deeply understood amongst a class of educated practitioners? You bet. Totally. But an awful mess for a kid with an iPhone wanting to shoot and edit a video love note for his or her amour on Valentine’s Day. Useless really. But the funny thing is that he or she can do much of functionally the SAME thing that the TV station editor can do in terms of actual editing today. Our NLEs provide the functions of the old systems, but I’m pretty sure they do it via tricky math, NOT by actually having a 30fps genlock signal ACTUALLY in the computer, phone, or up in the cloud. It’s an accommodation based on historic practices. Useful? Of course. Nobody’s denying that least of all me, who tracks timecode frames all day every day. But that little voice is starting to ask why? Ten or so years ago I’d never delivered anything but 649×480 30fps my entire career. Then suddenly that all blew up. Decades of SD practices fell like dominos. And yes, I’m wondering if TC might do that in the future too?Why am I allowing myself to consider that? Because while the utility is still there, the foundational function of synchronization to actual time – the real underlying need at the heart of the whole construct – I think might be something that can be done better, cheaper and easier if it can be looked at with fresh eyes.
Again, if my phone is perfectly accurate to a global satellite standard, why not my next camera? Is it really an engineering necessity? Or Industrial entropy? I don’t know the answer to that. I just know that I used Lumberjack Systems clock time based logging software to realtime log my big Florida shoot – and it was feeling a lot like the future. And the $99 iPad Mini that I picked up from the AT&T store on close-out when I renewed my cel phone contract last time – seemed to do EVERYTHING I needed in synchronization without a timecode device in sight.
Reading how mad Bob Zelin seems to be at me for ruining everyone’s ability to make a living like they did in the 1980s is sad. But I’m pretty sure that was going to happen anyway. Even if I had stayed in radio my whole career. (Wow, after writing it – THAT is really a depressing thought!)
It sure felt like change is again underway to me.
FWIW
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “To my thinking, the fundamental purpose of timecode (however you choose to express it) is synchronization”
I think that’s the basic disconnect in this discussion. To some of us, timecode is there as a place to identify frame-accurate edit points and durations. Electronic synchronization has never been part of it, since that’s a different function. If you mean alignment of matched sources, like multicam recordings, then yes, that’s another and secondary purpose.
[Bill Davis] “Sadly, differing international power standards meant no global cadence standard has ever existed. Black and white shoehorned color in and so we got our weird fractional cadences (29.97 and 23.98 etc) for good engineering reasons but terrible clock synchronization capabilities including sub flavors of TC like drop and non-drop numbering schemes JUST to keep the numbers from screwing things up”
That’s not completely accurate. The fractional quality only relates to recording/playback speed versus the electrical standard and therefore a real-time clock. Timecode is not fractional. 1 TC value = 1 video frame. Drop-frame is merely a sequence to dropping certain numbers in the count, so 1 hour of TC duration equals 1 hr of cock duration. Yes, that’s a total kludge.
However, the 29.97 or 23.98 recordings affect the recording speed, NOT the timecode itself. You are free to record at a true 30fps or 24fps if you like, as long as NTSC TV isn’t involved. For example 30.0 for the web or 24.0 for cinemas. In either case the timecode values don’t change. Only the speed of the recording. And in the case of drop versus non-drop, if you record 23.98, there is no such difference. It only applies to 29.97 recordings.
[Bill Davis] “But the funny thing is that he or she can do much of functionally the SAME thing that the TV station editor can do in terms of actual editing today. Our NLEs provide the functions of the old systems, but I’m pretty sure they do it via tricky math, NOT by actually having a 30fps genlock signal ACTUALLY in the computer, phone, or up in the cloud”
I have no idea what “tricky math” means, but all NLEs and linear systems and yes – iPhone, computers, etc. handle math functions under the hood. The lack of genlock for computers is actually quite a problem. It’s one of the reasons that many of us complain about playing FCPX or Premiere Pro in front of a client and lip-sync is rubbery. Sometimes it’s on and sometimes it’s off. Or it doesn’t match between the computer display and the video output to an SDI monitor.
[Bill Davis] “Again, if my phone is perfectly accurate to a global satellite standard, why not my next camera? “
OK, so your recording is stamped with GPS information. How does that relate to an actual signal that identifies each frame of the recording? And how does that stamp get understood by other applications – readers, asset management systems, burn-in generators, etc?
Gosh, maybe that iPhone will end up stamping timecode 🙂
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
PS: If by “synchronization” and GPS, what you really want is a method to force multiple cameras and your iPhone/iPad/logging device to start with an identical reference, then you really aren’t talking about timecode at all. Merely a way to generate a reference signal to which existing timecode signals could jam. Two entirely different discussions in that case and definitely a worthwhile function.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
What you can’t get around Oliver is that TIME remains the constant. A second is a second universally and everywhere. It’s not until you get to the video industry that the arbitrary inconsistencies show up. A system demanding we accommodate 24, 25, 30, 60 (and more) divisions of the same unit. And that’s fine. It solves real issues. I get that. But at the heart of things is still the one singular heartbeat ALL the systems share. Time. My argument is to bolster THAT. Provide more and better access and linkage to THAT across all cameras and devices. Wouldn’t better RealTime keeping – improved and accessible in a way it is NOT today, let the chips slice it 50 ways to Sunday – keeping the consumers AND the Phantom wranglers happy? (and all the broadcast folk the world over satisfied too!)
Seems reasonable to me, but what do I know.
; )
Hope to see you in the Press Room at NAB. And remember I owe you at least a drink for the crew referral. Great guys who did a great job for me last month!
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “Seems reasonable to me, but what do I know.”
And to me, as well.
[Bill Davis] “Hope to see you in the Press Room at NAB. And remember I owe you at least a drink for the crew referral. Great guys who did a great job for me last month!
“Me, too. Good to hear that it worked out. Cheers!
Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Jeremy Garchow] “I literally think we are having different conversations on timecode.
“As I’ve been reading through this thread, I think there is actually a lack of understanding on the part of some of what time code actually is.
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