The ”democratization of video” marches on, and I am right in step.  Every month I receive more and more orders from clients who send me completed programs that they have edited on their own systems — often inside a powerful laptop. 

I usually receive either an edited master videotape or a portable hard drive.  (check out my blog of indies, miniDVs and portable hard drives: http://tinyurl.com/6agsm4) 

Taking advantage of our wide array of videotape machine formats, a client usually wants us at Video Labs to either make additional videotape and/or DVD copies of the finished program.

All very fine — bring it on! 

The only downside to this “democratization” movement has been the relaxation — usually unintentionally — of some essential technical guidelines, that if not followed, can cause havoc.

Don’t get me wrong — I am not a snob.  Unlike some other media veterans, I welcomed the dilution of the oft-used elitist term, “broadcast quality.”  Those walls were torn down thanks in large part by the video music realm.  And I for one think it improved our business by ushering in exciting new programming.

But with more people producing and editing programs for broadcast or cable that do not have what we used to call “station” experience, I sometimes receive masters that have indeed strayed a bit too far — that will end up being rejected by the quality assurance review process of a broadcast or cable entity.

One frequent issue is the use of time code on program masters. 

Simply put, time code is the unique address given to every frame of video (30-frames per second in NTSC).  The address is expressed in terms of hours : minutes : seconds : frames.  For more background about time code, check out this link:  http://tinyurl.com/5v8uqz  Time code can range from 00:00:00:00 to 23:59:59:29 and then it starts over again.

Of course, nothing is easy in this field – so just when you thought you understood that, there is one more twist: the difference between non-drop and drop-frame timecode.  Check this out for background about that: http://tinyurl.com/4qsnrg 

All you really need to know is that drop-frame timecode is best for accurately following our normal clocks.  

Follow this example:  Let’s say you set up your editing time line so that the program begins at 01:00:00:00.  When the program is laid down with drop-frame time code, and you go to 01:30:00:00, the difference is exactly 30-minutes as you’d think.  But when using non-drop time code, the actual duration would be a couple of seconds more.

Now, let’s pretend you are in the master control center of a broadcast or cable entity.  You have a gazillion tapes around you and a number of playback machines that have to be triggered automatically and precisely at the right time.  Now think about it, if you were in that situation running programs and station breaks, wouldn’t it be really convenient to be able to easily tell how far you are into a program without having to rewind back to the beginning and timing it?

Well, think of the time code example I used earlier.  What if every program was indeed encoded in drop-frame time code, with the program starting at exactly 01:00:00;00?  Sure enough, by monitoring the program at any point during playback, one could tell how far into the program they are.

You might ask why not have the program start at 00:00:00;00 then?  Well, think about what time code number comes right before 00:00:00;00?  It’s 23:59:59:29 (yes in both non-drop and drop-frame realms – 2 frames are not dropped at the 10th minute mark in drop frame: http://tinyurl.com/5k5dhu) – and that is higher numerically than 00:00:00;00.  That violates another time code rule:  a tape needs to have continuously ascending time code or else it will cause extreme confusion.  That’s because the editing programs and playback machines  all operate on the premise that going to a higher timecode than a present location means fast forward — and to a lower time code means rewind.

So this leads us to the another dictum in setting up time code for editing sequences.  Let’s work backwards.  On a program tape, there should be 60-seconds of bars and tone, 20-seconds of slate (text with information identifying the program) and then a 10-second countdown that goes to black at 2.  If you do the math and subtract from 01:00:00;00, it comes out that bars and tone then should start at 00:58:30:00.  Give yourself a few seconds of pad before that, and you get 00:58:20:00.  Check out the diagram at the very top of this article.

There you have it.  So, if you are editing a program that might be “aired” on broadcast or cable, start your timeline at 00:58:20:00 and use drop-frame time code.  (And no, it is not easy to change time code for an editing sequence after you start editing.)  So get in the habit of setting that all up before doing any editing.

Now, there is one post-script to all this.  Tradition has it in the corporate video world to follow the same rules as above — except they use non-drop time code rather than drop-frame.  Frankly, I gotta tell you, I am not sure why that occurred over the years, but I believe it developed because such non-broadcast programming is usually shorter and there is less concern about being exactly time accurate during playback.  With that being the case, sure, not having to deal with ”dropped frames” is indeed easier when making clip calculations.

Post your comments below or e-mail me at dryan@videolabs.net 

Having issues playing back your Canon HDV tapes? Check out http://tinyurl.com/5jvb9y