[LAD] interesting blog post about syncing blender and ardour

[Ralf Mardorf]

Paul Davis wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 12:36 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons at kokkinizita.net> wrote:
>   
>> On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 08:18:00AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> SMPTE is a low resolution time code. There is no reason to be limited
>>> by frame rates of 30 fps when defining a synchronization protocol
>>> between applications running on the same (or even two networked)
>>> computer(s). JACK transport is sample-accurate, and as such is
>>> thousands of times more accurate than SMPTE.
>>>       
>> While I'd agree 100% that SMPTE is not what's needed here,
>> your comments on its potential accuracy are misleading.
>>
>> The *data* contained in the SMPTE timecode is quantised
>> to frames. But SMPTE is not just that data. It is data
>> encoded into an audio signal, and this can be resolved
>> to sub-microsecond accuracy.
>>     
>
> when rolling, sure. i'm thinking about a locate command.
>
> its also true that there are variants of SMPTE that include subframes,
> which certainly help the accuracy, but its not clear to me how
> commonly this information is actually passed around.

 From my experiences with SMPTE you need a minimal pre-roll and for 
audio recordings it's common to have one or two bars pre-roll, which is 
much more than enough to get in perfect sync by SMPTE. IIRC even with 
dropouts my analog tape recorder and Atari were in sync within 1/8 note 
and the fine thing is, that when using LTC it should be possible to be 
in sync while jogging or winding, but I can't remember that this worked 
for me at home. For analog (old professional) VTR a pre-roll simply was 
needed to get the spools on speed, I don't think for hard disk audio and 
video recording SMPTE will need a noticeable pre-roll. The accuracy 
seems to be better than what is needed for audio and video. I don't know 
all SMPTE variations and I don't know if there is some newer standard, 
but IMO SMPTE is something that should be supported. I never heard of 
discontent because of using SMPTE and I also never had any trouble 
because of SMPTE. The question might be, if SMPTE would be used by many 
Linux users or not. Btw. one real disadvantage of SMPTE can be 
crosstalk. I prefer a low level for the SMPTE signal with the risk of 
getting more dropouts.

Ralf