ABSTRACT
Timecode has origins tied to the earliest video recorders in the 1960s. The recording of moving images on magnetic tape created a number of problems related to editing video and aligning audio with video. In film-based recordings, each picture on the film was aligned with guide holes that could be counted exactly to clearly define the location of frames. With magnetic tape, there were no such guide holes, creating a difficulty in clearly tracking the alignment of frames. By 1967, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) had created a standardized system for sending audio impulses for recording a picture number parallel to every video picture, thus creating an “electronic guide hole” system. This method was the first Timecode. In the years since the creation of Timecode, a number of interesting uses have emerged including aligning video and audio signals and triggering cues from a Timecode signal. QLab 3 has the ability to both transmit and receive Timecode signals across an audio output or a MIDI system.
