[LAU] SMPTE timecode?

[Rick Green]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2010, Robin Gareus wrote:

> For post-prod I assume you don't want to sync ardour to incoming LTC but
> rather want to import audio-samples into ardour at an offset given by LTC.
>
> I had some scripts to extract the first LTC timecode [of an LTC timecode
> file accompanying an audio-file] and write that into the
> broadcast-header of the audio-file (which ardour understands). That
> mechanism does not take variable speed LTC into account but otherwise
> worked just fine. If that's what you want to do let me know and I'll go
> looking for them..
>
  Well, this all may be moot, because the videographers themselves haven't 
gotten back to me.  I was just trying to learn how I could best 
interoperate with them.  I won't be doing any of the video editing myself, 
and ultimately, I'll just give them a stereo track, and I was hoping I 
could also carry along a timecode track to ease their job of sync'ing it 
up.  This is a university-level Student/professor group doing the 
shooting, and I don't know if they're even going to the trouble of 
sync'ing their cameras' clocks, much less prepared to provide me with any 
form of clock sync.  I'm just trying to get myself up to speed so that I 
know how to deal with whatever they throw at me.

   I've been told by a local friend that it's not worth the trouble.  Video 
is approx 30 FPS, and audio is 48k S/s, so alignment 'by ear' is 'good 
enough'.  That may be what they're planning to do anyway...

   Reading the Ardour manual, and poking thru the menus, I found an option 
to send MTC, but not one to receive MTC.  I don't want to be responsible 
for providing a clock to the video recorder(s).  Ardour's timeline always 
starts at 0:00, and I haven't found any option to use wall time instead. 
If they were to try using MMC to sync the audio during post, it would 
depend on both the DAW and the video editor using the same clock.


-- 
Rick Green

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