From the course: Media Composer 2019 Essential Training: 101 Fundamentals 1

Working with timecode - Media Composer Tutorial

From the course: Media Composer 2019 Essential Training: 101 Fundamentals 1

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Working with timecode

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- [Instructor] For many editors timecode is far from central to the editing process, but actually in Media Composer it's really functional and worth taking some time to get to grips with because it allows you to navigate and interact with your media in helpful ways. A good example is of course, we've got timecode at the top left corner of the Timeline Window That's our current timecode and if I scroll over to the start of the sequence, you can see that we're actually beginning at hour one. This is sometimes referred to in TV as one, double o, double o as a starting point for delivery for content, which is quite popular for transmission service. Of course, up at the top of the Composer Window we've got names and timecode information from our clips and even here, if I mark an in and an out point in my sequence, I get that duration in the center duration of the Composer Window, and if I click into the source monitor, I get the duration between my in and out marks there just remove these marks here and scroll over a little. If you have a full size keyboard and by that, I mean, one that has a numerical keypad, not just numbers along the top above the letters, and if number lock is on, whether you're in the source monitor or in the timeline and by that, I mean, those windows are active, you can just start typing numbers and hit Enter and have the playhead move. And you don't need the full number for the timecode for this to work. So for example, right now, my timecode is at one hour 43 seconds and 23 frames and if I just start typing on my keyboard four, zero, zero, you can see it pops up there, the punctuation is added automatically and I press Enter, Media Composer has moved the playhead to four seconds exactly. and let's move a little later, I'll go to 43 seconds and zero frames and there we are. You can also make additions and subtractions. So if I type in plus one, zero, zero and Enter the playhead moves one second later. This process of using the plus and minus keys to navigate through your sequence is surprisingly elegant and useful and again, you don't need the full timecode, although you can put it in if you want to. If I type in one, zero, zero and then let's say four, zero, zero, zero and Enter, the playhead will move. You can change the start time code for newly-created sequences in the general settings. If I go into Settings and move into the Project category and open up General, you can see there's a default starting timecode option. This won't change the start time code for an existing sequence but you can modify that also. If I go into my Sequences bin by double clicking the icon, I can right-click on the current sequence we're looking at and choose Sequence Report. This gives me access to lots of information about the current sequence or the one I've clicked on anyway, click on Generate Reports and Media Composer will produce a text document with all of this information in it. Importantly though, you can also modify the start timecode of the sequence. So if I set this to double o, double o and apply changes, you can see this updates at the top left corner of the timeline window. I'm going to leave this for now on one hour because that's the default for the application but know that this is where you would change it. Coincidentally, if I right-click in the Composer Window and choose Composer Settings, this is just a shortcut into the options, I can enable two rows of data permanently in the window and these menus are editable, you can choose what's going to be displayed. One of the most useful ones is perhaps absolute, which shows you the position within the sequence or the clip, regardless of the original timecode or for that matter remain, which shows you how far you are from the end of the sequence rather than from the beginning or for that matter the end of the clip. Most of the time I have this option turned off because I want as much room on screen as possible for my video but you can turn it off or on whenever you like.

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