time code issue

D

devhaven

New member
I am DOP on a short film. The director, the producer, and I have a little experience in production, but we are hiring other crew with expertise in their fields. We now have someone for sound. The person hired for sound has requested that the DOP know what to do for time code.

I know what time code is, however; i want to know what I need to do on my end of things to cooperate with sound. I am shooting with the Canon XL2.

Do I need to do something with the XL2 or with the tape?

I figured it's better to learn here than not knowing on set. Thank you for helping.
 
Dear devhaven,

I'm not sure if this is what you're asking. If you are recording sound via the Camera, then Time-code is not THAT important (though it still is handy for capturing). And if you are recording sound via an external recorder, then the Camera's time-code will be used for syncing to the audio's in post. So the only thing that you may want to do before going on the shoot is to pre-record the tapes without anything to "burn" a sequential time-code from start to end of each tape. Because it is possible for you Camera to lose track of the last time-code when starting to record, it could start at 00:00:00 in the middle of the tape. This can be quite a problem if you capture/log using time-code. So the only way I have ever encountered to guard against this problem is to pre-record the tape.

You put a new tape in the camera and just start recording (with lens cap on and without sound). Once the end of the tape is reached, the entire tape will have a sequential time-code that the camera will use for the production shoot. I don't really worry about this during a short shoot if I know the camera will never really be switched off, but as soon as you move from location to location and the camera is switched of or shots are replayed, you run the risk that the time-code could be reset.

For external audio, you will also need to know what time-code you are using (I assume you will shoot at 24p or 25p). The audio time-code needs to corresponds to the speed (time-code) of the camera (frames per second). If external audio is used, you may need to synchronize the camera and the recording device. I don't use external recorders, only mixer if needed, mostly because of cost reasons.

I hope this is somewhat helps.

Regards,

Peet
 
Timecode is really only useful if the camera accepts external timecode from a recorder (which the XL2 doesn't do). So it's not really important. Use a slate to sync sound instead.
 
Thanks for the excellent feedback.

An external recorder is being used, however. So i will attempt to pre-record the tapes first and then sync if necessary.

Thanks again. Any further feedback is greatly appreciated.

Devon
 
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