If you are printing to any deck (digibeta, dv etc) that has a "make TC" function, the TC value you specify will start at the first incoming frame received during record.

If you are printing to Digibeta or HDcam using a Decklink, you can edit to tape with frame accuracy on your pre-striped master tape.

Why can't you make Vegas throw out the timeline timecode when going to DVCam???

Nice question..
I have the Sony DSR-11, not the most options possible. But when I put in a new tape for printing, it would be nice to use the timecode in the Vegas timeline. My client wants the material to start at 10:00:00:00, and I can't give it that way (only when converting to digibeta)..

greetz
mark

DSR-11 here too and good question.
However I think if you prestripe the tapes starting at whatever then it'll work. Getting frame accurate control on a DV deck is we're told problematic however recording in DVCAM this should be possible, after all I can clone DVCAM tapes with TC between DSR-11s, why does Vegas have a problem with this?
Bob.

This is a question some of us have asked for a while now. Some people just say that timecode is a "thing of the past" and it really isn't needed anymore. I can somewhat see their point because we aren't really going tape to tape or going "offline" to "online" as much. Once we capture the original footage we are making a brand new copy on our computers - so the need for any timecode is really debatable at that point.

However - having a method to output TC via firewire along with the picture would be great but it isn't "built" that way. One of the things I still love about the Studio 16 program is that it had a port for TC and via a plug-in you could output TC as well by routing it out through the built in audio of the Amiga. (and via a genlock you could also make window dubs - real time) But also keep in mind we were not talking about firewire, we were talking about rca out. So taking that concept what would we do? Wouldn't really work for firewire. Would work for outputting analog with TC on the right channel though...but now we go back to the whole "online" "offline" idea and not too many people are requesting VHS dubs with TC on the right channel.

Anyhow - I wish there was an easy way to just lock up the deck to the Vegas timline *and* output fresh TC at the same time. As an example you can take almost any consumer DV camera and make a 1:1 copy via firewire and it will bring over the TC info as well. It does not matter that you can not set most consumer DV cam's TC info nor does it matter that most start TC at 00:00:00:00. Making a 1:1 copy does just that so if your source tape starts at TC 10:00:00:00 that is what your 1:1 dub will also start with. So it has always been my question that if Vegas is acting as the source "1" and your deck is the record "1" why can't Vegas transmit TC data as well, thus creating a "1:1" copy of what is on the timeline? Right now whatever TC you assign to the timeline or the individual media is really ignored on output of any kind. How hard would it be to have an option to output a user set TC if the user wanted to do that? (And I am talking strictly firewire out - not MTC or Black Magic methods) (and I am not asking in a sarcastic "how hard..." way, I am just simply asking "how hard would it be...")

And I should add on here that I am not talking about using Vegas as an "online" tool where you would edit in the vegas timeline to something already laid down on tape. I am saying you finish your project in Vegas and than assign a TC to that project and on output you have that 1:1 concept where, on the recorded tape, you have the same TC that is on the Vegas timeline.

Over firewire, no frame accuracy. It's not not just Vegas, it's a spec issue, I believe.

I think we need MORE timecode capabilities in Vegas. I'd like to be able to convert LTC code on an audio channel to usable timecode without additional hardware and I'd like to be able to conversely convert timecode to an audio channel. For multicamera double system sound jobs this would be invaluable. Look at the timecode capablilites of the Mac only Metacorder audio application and you will see what I'm hoping for.
http://www.metacorder.info/

Filmy,
I like your comments. I know it cannot be frame accurate, but there are two things that don't really need frame accuracy... Assuming you mean by frame accurate the starting point of the printing on the tape.

I have noticed that when I have 1 minute black video between two parts, that minute is always exactly 1 minute when I print it. So once the tape is printing, Vegas is quite frame accurate at WHAT it is printing. Maybe not at WHEN it starts printing, but I don't mind when it starts printing on my new inserted tape.

If I would want my client to have a tape where his movie starts at 10:00:00:00, I could have the Vegas timeline start at 09:59:00:00, put a color bar in it and the movie starting at 10:00:00:00. This way it doesn't matter if the tape starts printing some seconds from the beginning of that tape -it could even start printing 30 seconds later for all I care - , because wherever it starts, the color bars start at 09:59:00:00 (new timecode written on the tape). This way my movie can always begin at 10:00:00:00, because Vegas writes that timecode on that frame and once it is printing it is very accurate with my DSR-11..

I think it looks a lot better to have a Vegas-written timecode on tape when I deliver it..

Does this make a little bit of sense at all? (I tend to be not so clear in some of my explanations ;-) )

Yes this makes perfect sense.
Insert edits on DV will always be problematic given that audio is not locked to vision, even if you can get the heads to switch from play to record in the exact right place you could overwite the audio from several previous frames resulting in a bit of digital anarchy. Of course most modern DV devices do have vision and audio locked even though the spec doesn't say you have to.
That's DV, DVCAM doesn't have this problem and Sony have for years been making decks like the DSR 30 which will do assemble edits and you don't even need a PC or a NLE to do it, yes folks you can edit video without a PC and for simple stuff way faster too.
So yes you can feed TC to a deck and yes it will record the TC that it's being sent and yes in the real world of broadcast program is supposed to start at a defined TC, 10:00:00;00 is a pretty common value. That means tone and bars can come before at a logical value.
Now sure it'd be nice to be able to assemble tone and bars and slates etc on the T/L and get the whole thing to PTT with the TC we need but even that's pretty pathetic. The PTT function is supposed to do that for you, that's what computers are for, simplify the humdrum!
In the real world post production pushes out many programs per day per desk and they're as sure as hell not going to waste the stations money doing something that the systems should be doing for them, their antiquated linear system did this and the fact that Vegas doesn't is pretty sad.
It's sad for more than one reason too, look at tapes coming out of Avid systems, their countdowns and slates have quite nice Avid logos in them, can anyone say free publicity. I'd love for Vegas to do this, I'd even try doing it myself but then again the logo is copyright so I'll probably get my butt kicked for trying to promote Vegas.
Bob.

I'm with you there, tomaras - I too would love to have basic SMPTE timecode functions such as being able to read it from an audio track.

We did a multi-camera shoot a while back in a recording studio - we used the house TC generator and fed SMPTE to all cameras via the studio headphone monitor feed; we had the SMPTE in one channel, and a mono mix in the other.
We thought we were being pretty sneaky - we'd have an audio track for reference, *and* a rock-solid TC reference on all the cameras - and since the session stretched over several days and all cameras were not necessarily in use all the time, it would make reassembling the session for the edit much easier...

Or so we thought.

Turns out although SMPTE is an audio-based timecode, Vegas just couldn't read it.
We assumed (stupidly, as it turns out) that this was such a basic requirement that 'of course' an editing system with such an audio heritage would eat SMPTE for breakfast.
Not the case, sadly.

So a basic SMPTE reader would definately get my vote.

Andy Mac

I'm absolutely with you on this one, why Vegas cannot do such a basic function is beyond me. However you can get LTC harware readers that'll plug the hole. However I'm a bit uncertain as to just how much use they are anyway as Vegas will not chase TC. You can however slave decks to Vegas TC.
If you have high end cameras you can of course feed TC to them and they'll all stay in perfect sync, then it's a simple matter to sync them at start in Vegas, even if the master TC was to drift it doesn't matter as everything drifts together. Of course if you can afford such kit you probably would know this! Mind you with most of todays cameras and audio recorders they'll hold sync just running off their own clocks for a long time, I've had no problems over 60 minutes.
Bob.

Going to what Spot has said mant times if you get a midi /TC reader Vegas will work with it as Vegas does work with Midi. However I agree that it would be great if you could just take an LTC in and have Vegas read it.

I have to bring up somehting else that I *really* loved about Studio 16. On the timeline you could have everything sync up and you could manually enter in the TC info on the *audio* track. This was just perfect for syncing up dailes. You could cue up the tape (with window burn worked best) and see the TC of the slate than take the audio track, manually enter in the TC at the slate strike and *poof* - in sync and locked up to exteranl picture. Having even this "basic" ability in Vegas would just knock it up a few dozen notches because now you don't really have to use external source to trigger things.

Now as for what Bob said - I have an AEC box that will take either VITC or LTC and input it via the PC's serial port - thus faking the NLE into thinking you have a deck with RS422 control. However Vegas doesn't use this - so Vegas won't really work for that either. AEC has lots of nifty little things - but to the best of my knowledge none of them interact with Vegas.

Vegas will read TC through 422 through the BMD cards, well I guess that's where it's coming from as the only deck I've worked with also has TC embedded in the SDI stream.
Thing is though from what I can see TC is a pretty alien concept overall in Vegas, unlike a traditional video editing system Vegas doesn't lock anything to source TC rather it computes TC based on time, does (or used to?) decide which frame of video belongs where by deciding how many frames into a clip it should be. I suspect that's where the flash frame problem was coming from, some error in the time to frame number conversion would sometimes go awry and Vegas would pull in the wrong frame.
I've ingested a tape with mostly missing TC and that'd bring any production system to a grinding halt, the fact that Vegas didn't even notice in this case was sure a blessing but it does reveal something of the inner workings. Also the fact that we can mix all manner of media on the timeline again indicates a complete lack of comprehension of TC, try doing any of those tricks on an Avid system. Does that mean Avid are plain lazy or does it mean they want their systems rock solid.
Bob.

I can appreciate that the underlying mechanics of Vegas may well preclude it from ever being able to fully handle TC, but still... a SMPTE reader would be surely a simple thing to implement, and would help enormously.

And yes, I agree that modern DV cams are pretty good at staying in overall synch with each other, even over long time frames, but that doesn't help in the case where you're dealing with a complex project involving different media types in different applications & platforms.
In our case as described above, we had the multicamera visuals being edited in Vegas, while the ProTools recording session was edited in a different physical location, on a Mac.

If I could have just been able to read the SMPTE TC within my Vegas session, I could have asked the Sound guy to give me mixes at specific points... and given this was a three day session, involving multiple takes of the same piece, the problems we had trying to match up sound & picture were horrendous!

Andy

Subject sems to change to recieving TC in Vegas...

About generating it: If Vegas can get the original TC from the tape in my DSR-11 through Firewire. Shouldn't it be able to generate it as well?

If I want my tape to start at 05:59:00:00... and my movie at 06:00:00:00.. and my Vegas timeline has that TC.. can it not be written on that tape? please?
:-)

>>>About generating it: If Vegas can get the original TC from the tape in my DSR-11 through Firewire. Shouldn't it be able to generate it as well?

If I want my tape to start at 05:59:00:00... and my movie at 06:00:00:00.. and my Vegas timeline has that TC.. can it not be written on that tape? please?<<<

Ok, now we have come full circle on the topic. :)

Subject sems to change to recieving TC in Vegas...

About generating it: If Vegas can get the original TC from the tape in my DSR-11 through Firewire. Shouldn't it be able to generate it as well?

If I want my tape to start at 05:59:00:00... and my movie at 06:00:00:00.. and my Vegas timeline has that TC.. can it not be written on that tape? please?
:-)


Damn right!!!!! Were not talking insert editing here people. Just simple timelin TC printing to the tape. It ain't rocket science.