Time Code is On Your Side (page 3)

Time code is also necessary for computer animation that is too complex to play back in real time. To capture complex animation, the computer must render each frame and then prompt a frame-by-frame VCR to record these frames onto tape, one at a time. Without time code, this process would be impossible. Control-track edits might get you within several frames, but could not achieve consistent frame accuracy.

Accurate editing is often important for music videos. If you are adding video clips to existing music and want certain parts of your shot to happen on the beat of music (the basketball goes through the hoop just as the cymbal crashes), then you will have an easier time of it if you use time code.

Even if you're going to digitize your footage and edit it using a computer system, time code is still important. Using software, you search your raw tapes for the shots that you want to use. You mark the begin and the end times of the shots (by hitting a key) and the software notes and saves these time codes. You can also describe each shot (dog1, dog2, cat with mouse toy, etc.).

When you have chosen all the shots that you are going to work with, you can tell the computer to "batch digitize" your footage. While you go off to do something more productive, the computer finds the shots that you selected and converts them into digital information. Of course, you still have to change out the tape cassettes if your footage isn't all on one cassette, but that's a small price for this much automation.

Time code is about precision. With it, you can catalog your video down to 1/30th of a second and find specific shots--even frames--again when you need them. The operative word in time code is time, because that is what you will save by using it.

• Control Track Electronic pulses that correspond to frames of video. Unlike time code, control-track pulses are not unique to each frame.
• Edit Decision List (EDL) A list of all the shots that you want to include in a video production. For each shot, the list usually shows the time code of the first frame and the last frame, and a short description. It may also include instructions for triggering titlers, special effects generators, etc.
• Frame Moving video consists of still pictures that display in rapid succession, creating an illusion of movement. There are 30 still pictures per second of video. Each of these pictures is a frame.
• Industrial 8mm Time Code A frame-accurate time-code system developed by Sony and available on all industrial 8mm and Hi8 camcorders and decks. It is incompatible with RCTC.
• Rewritable Consumer Time Code (RCTC) A time-code system developed by Sony and available on some consumer 8mm and Hi8 camcorders and decks.
• SMPTE Longitudinal Time Code Time code that can be recorded on a linear track on videotape, including a linear audio track.
• Time A commodity that Albert Einstein showed to be relative to the speed of light, and one that is almost always in short supply.
• Vertical Interval Time Code (VITC) Time code signal that is recorded in the "invisible" part of the video signal, the vertical interval.

--W.R.

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