Capturing Serial Timecode

[lavidtech-1]

Hi All,

We've been pretty successful at using Vrecord's Timecode capture feature to capture VITC data for Digibeta timecode, but only for Digibeta tapes.

We have some serial cables connected to our Betacam and D-2 decks and we can see timecode on deckcontrol, but have no way of capturing it using Vrecord's Serial option or VITC.

Is it still in an experimental phase or am I misunderstanding how to use that option?

Thanks.

[dericed]

Hi @lavidtech-1, vrecord is offering the options from the ffmpeg decklink demuxer, listed at https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-devices.html#decklink, so this issue might be an upstream one in ffmpeg or even in the decklink api.

The deckcontrol is independent of ffmpeg. I think possibly we could grab the timecode via the deckcontrol features but it would take some work to assure that we can mux it in sync with the audio and video that is coming over a different cable.

[lavidtech-1]

Hi @dericed, ah I see.

Ok. That makes sense. The Blackmagic Media Express software is somehow able to preserve the timecode from this serial data, so I wasn't certain if it was a simple answer or not.

Thank you for your help in understanding. It would be great if in the future we could preserve this as timecode data from Betacams/D-2 tapes and possibly other formats should be preserved if we are trying to be thorough.