rec.arts.movies.production.sound

On Oct 5, 10:09 pm, "Arnold F." wrote:
> Starting a job with about a dozen musical numbers for playback on
> set. I'm re-recording the music with timecode that will be sent to
> the slate (music sent to phonaks for artists). Is there a rule-of-
> thumb for how the timecode should be? I was thinking of separating
> the songs by minutes; first song starts at one minute, second song
> starts at 5 minutes, etc., or something along those lines. I was also
> wondering if each song shouldn't have some discrete user bits. Sound
> right?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> A.

Hey Arnold,

The key is to make sure there is no duplicate time code on any of the
songs. Sounds like you've got that covered. An approach that I
suspect post might appreciate would be to number each song with a
different hour (ie first song starts at 01:00:00:00, second song
starts at 02:00:00:00, etc -- that would allow them to easily identify
the track without having to whip out a calculator when they get to the
11th song).

As far as the user bits are concerned, practice tells me that no one
ever uses the user bits for anything. RAMPS members might have
experiences that prove me wrong, but I have seen zero evidence that
anyone really processes that data. About eleven or twelve years ago I
boomed for a guy who ingeniously found a way to send live code through
the user bits (I can't remember any more how he did it) for recording/
playback situations in the same take (it wasn't a file at that point
as it was 1/4" tape), but beyond that, I don't think anyone ever uses
the function. It's a noble attempt, but I think it's a tree that
falls in the empty forest.

nvt