What is Timecode? A Measure of the Duration of a Video Recording
Learn how it helps in the video & film production world.
If you are a professional video maker, you would already know how important a timecode is in the TV & film production process.
With timecode, some really important data is embedded into the digital video recording. It can add significant benefits to the way you work with video and can make your life easier later on.
So let us find exactly what it does?
What is Timecode?
As the name suggests, a Timecode is a measure of the duration of a video recording.
The time is displayed in hours, minutes and seconds!
If you want to check how it looks, just pause the tape at any given point. The camcorder will tell you where it is paused.
For instance you may see something like 00:15:25. Since the time is displayed in hours, minutes and seconds, it means the tape is less than 60 minutes long (zero hours of recording).
The second and third values are minutes and seconds. So, we are paused at 15 minutes and 25 seconds from the start of the tape.
Note - The timecode in the top right of the camcorder’s viewfinder indicates the hours, minutes and frames that have been recorded to the tape in the camcorder.
Understanding Frames
The information on timecode mentioned above was quite straight-forward. Very easy to understand!
The complexity comes into picture when you realize that a second of video recording is itself made up of a number of frames. And that too it is treated differently in different countries.
You have 25 frames per second (fps) recorded in most of Europe, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia to name a few.
It is 30 frames per second (fps) in the USA, Canada, Japan and many South American countries.
So you might see an additional value at the end of your timecode. Something like this - 00:15:25:12 (hours, minutes, seconds and frames).
With the frames information built in the timecode, you will always be able to find the exact point of a video clip. It will never vary since it is embedded in the data recorded with the shot.
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