Support for changing timecode mid-clip

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piersdeseilligny

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Support for changing timecode mid-clip

PostWed Aug 31, 2022 8:45 pm

How does DaVinci Resolve behave if the timecode of a clip is changed in the middle of it? Various file formats (such as MXF) support an "LtcChangeTable", which looks a bit like this:

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<LtcChangeTable tcFps="25" halfStep="false">
      <LtcChange frameCount="0" value="07450201" status="increment"/>
      <LtcChange frameCount="211" value="18530201" status="decrease"/>
      <LtcChange frameCount="212" value="09220201" status="increment"/>
      <LtcChange frameCount="671" value="18400201" status="decrease"/>
      <LtcChange frameCount="672" value="06580101" status="increment"/>
      <LtcChange frameCount="880" value="14060201" status="end"/>
   </LtcChangeTable>


How does DaVinci Resolve behave with these? It doesn't seem to take it into account when calculating the End TC.... It'd be amazing to be able to choose which of the sections is the"real" timecode.
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piersdeseilligny

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Re: Support for changing timecode mid-clip

PostMon Sep 26, 2022 3:54 pm

Anyone from BMD who works on Resolve familiar with this?
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Jim Simon

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Re: Support for changing timecode mid-clip

PostMon Sep 26, 2022 4:07 pm

I'm curious, what's the idea with changing timecode? Seems...a bad idea.
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piersdeseilligny

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Re: Support for changing timecode mid-clip

PostTue Sep 27, 2022 5:45 pm

Jim Simon wrote:I'm curious, what's the idea with changing timecode? Seems...a bad idea.


Yeah it's pretty niche, but very useful in some situations. For example for music videos where you have the song's playback position synced to the timecode (so if the on-set playback is 1min32 into the song, the timecode is 01:01:32.00, super useful for syncing clips to the song in post).

The timecode will obviously only be synced to the song once playback has started, which tends to be *after* the cameras have started recording.
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Jim Simon

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Re: Support for changing timecode mid-clip

PostThu Sep 29, 2022 4:52 pm

I'm a little lost. That just sounds like a timecode jam, which is pretty common.
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piersdeseilligny

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Re: Support for changing timecode mid-clip

PostThu Sep 29, 2022 9:21 pm

Jim Simon wrote:I'm a little lost. That just sounds like a timecode jam, which is pretty common.


Yeah that's essentially what it is, except the timecode is being jammed after the camera has started recording, because it's synced to the song being played back on-set (and it only gets played after the camera has started rolling)

Image

Having the song synced on-set to the tc that's fed into the camera means that, once in post, you can sync any clip to the song through timecode, rather than manually needing to find which clip corresponded to which point in the song.
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Jim Simon

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Re: Support for changing timecode mid-clip

PostSun Oct 02, 2022 5:03 pm

OK, I'm following.

Seems a weird way to work, though. Jam should occur before you roll camera.

And it seems this would be simpler to just use audio. You can feed playback to the camera as well as to on-set speakers. Resolve can then line them all up in the timeline by waveform.

Doesn't specifically answer the question, I know. But maybe helps get the job done?
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piersdeseilligny

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Re: Support for changing timecode mid-clip

PostTue Oct 11, 2022 10:51 am

Jim Simon wrote:OK, I'm following.

Seems a weird way to work, though. Jam should occur before you roll camera.

And it seems this would be simpler to just use audio. You can feed playback to the camera as well as to on-set speakers. Resolve can then line them all up in the timeline by waveform.

Doesn't specifically answer the question, I know. But maybe helps get the job done?


It should, but cameras do tend to support the jam occurring after roll, even though Resolve apparently doesn't, and it's a useful feature for certain scenarios. It's true that just using audio would (generally) work, but songs tend to have a lot of repeating elements (chorus) with the exact same waveform so it's not quite as perfectly reliable as timecode.

In the end I wrote a script for Resolve that updates the timecode based on LtcChangeTable metadata - if anyone wants it feel free to request.

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