From the course: Digital Media Foundations
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Measuring time with timecode
From the course: Digital Media Foundations
Measuring time with timecode
- [Instructor] When celluloid was the most popular medium, we needed to find a way to measure time. One obvious way was to count the number of frames. It's simple, certain, and uncomplicated. Frame counts are still used today, particularly in animation production, but a a more advanced system was developed for celluloid that used carefully spaced numbers pre-printed, burned into the edge of the film. One problem with both frame counts and edge numbers is that it can take quite a lot of effort to use them to work out the hours, minutes, seconds, and frames they represent, which we need to get a sense of playback duration. When video technology came along, it was an opportunity to add a new system of measurement: Timecode. Timecode stores a number on every frame of video. In fact, timecode is used for audio too and a number of other industrial technologies. A timecode number displays the hour, minute, second, and frame of a particular image. Anytime you see a series of eight numbers…
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