Genlock, Timecode, Wordclock -- What Are They? Do I Need Them? Are They Interchangeable?

hey everyone i wanted to take a little bit of time today and talk about a couple of topics that seem to be causing some confusion out there in the real world so i get questions about these things all the time and i haven't found any great videos here on youtube to talk about what the differences are between time code and gen lock and then i also want to do a brief mention of word clock at the end because that's kind of a similar concept something you might encounter as you're working on working with audio so yeah gen lock and uh time code are not the same thing at all and unfortunately people confuse the two and can not only confuse the two assuming that they might be the same thing but also that one can take the place of the other and they really can't they're they're very very different things so even though they're both synchronization signals they have very different purposes and very different uses uh so i'm trying to clear up some of that confusion here today so i wanted to cover gen lock first and then i'll get into the time code here in a little bit but gen lock is basically a signal that's used to tell video equipment specifically usually cameras and playback devices like uh video media players or whatever how and of how often and when to output the video information so it's a timing signal to basically make sure that all of your video devices that are going into a switcher are outputting their video simultaneously so for example the upper left pixel pixels at zero zero x comma y is output at the same time on all connected devices and the reason for that well originally had to do with the way we did things back in the analog days before a device called a frame frame sync was actually something that was very common so what happened was your video switchers would instead of buffering the video data coming in you would make sure that all your cameras were timed the same so that the same position on the screen from every camera was being received at the same time therefore when you needed to switch cameras or we needed to dissolve from one camera to another you can just do that very cleanly you don't have to worry about where in the course of drawing the picture the camera is because if you have the camera's gen lock they're all outputting the same portion of the picture at the same time therefore to switch from one to the other is very very easy because they're all timed and lined up exactly the same in the digital world that we have today it's not is necessary to do that because most of the switchers that we have now actually have frame sinks built into them and what happens with that is internally the switcher will buffer will hold on to that picture data until it needs to output it so if your cameras are not synchronized the switcher will store that information temporarily in a buffer and then the next time it needs to start drawing or outputting a video frame it's able to pull from the buffer instead of requiring the camera be at that exact same location as what it's trying to output so if you're outputting pixel 0 comma 0 you don't have to make sure that the cameras are all sending picture at zero comma zero this the frame synchronization synchronizer that's built into the switcher actually takes care of that and on almost all video switches we have uh digital high definition actually do have frame syncs built into them so it's much less necessary today to have gen lock cameras than it was back in the day but there is still one very distinct advantage and that is in reducing the amount of latency that there is from the time light enters the camera until it's output out to the back of the switcher and sent to a display device like a television or a projector so if you're in a situation where you're doing imag image magnification which is basically the terminology for displaying what's going on live at an event on a projector screen within the venue you want to minimize that delay as much as possible because if it's more than say two to three frames people that are watching are going to see that and then notice it and it's kind of distracting to have what's going on on screen be delayed by much compared to what's actually happening in real life so going with a gen locked source allows you to eliminate that buffering that's happening on the inputs of the switcher and basically allows the video coming from the camera to be passed straight out to the back of the switcher in real time without that additional delay that's required when your frame information your video frame information is not synchronized what does it take to do this uh we need a few pieces of equipment in order to do this first of all we need to have a device which generates a synchronization signal and this signal is our gen lock signal so gen lock means generator locked which basically referring to the fact that our cameras and switcher are locked or synchronized to our video timing generator so our gen lock source and i happen to have one of those here in front of me this is an old black burst generator that i've had for no gosh maybe 20 years close to 20 years this device on the back has six bnc outputs and these signals coming out of this are what we call black burst it's also referred to as bi-level sync and so basically this this signal is there to tell the cameras the switcher and playback devices recorders that kind of thing when to start outputting each frame not just each frame but each actual line horizontal line of video as well so this device is generating that signal that all of the connected devices actually need now this is a device that's meant for standard definition and the signal coming out of here is actually just a picture that's completely black so there's no picture information there at all it's basically the synchronization signals that are used as part of describing a picture in the analog world so in this case it's ntsc this is the device that we would use one of the potential devices that we would use in a studio setting or whatever in order to produce that synchronization signal that our cameras and our switcher and our playback devices and anything else would need so what i've done is i've hooked the output of this up to this oscilloscope that's over here and then i'm going to display the output of this oscilloscope on your screen so if we go over to this here we're seeing the output of this black burst generator now as mentioned this is a standard definition signal so this is ntsc so it's outputting 525 lines um there's no horizontal picture resolution technically but yes it's a signal that's 525 lines and this signal we're seeing right here on screen is being output 525 times per frame at 60 fields per second or 30 frames per second or 60 fields per second so the signal is actually being generated quite quite quickly what you're seeing here if uh look at this pulse down here is basically telling the cameras and whatever this is when i want you to start a new line of video and then this signal right here you're seeing kind of flickering back and forth this is what we call the color burst it's basically a timing signal for all devices make sure that they're in sync and as far as outputting the color information that's part of a video now in high definition even though we can use these old standard definition black burst devices in order to sync our sync our cameras and switchers our devices are not using that color timing information back in the day you would you would use this in order to make sure that the sub carrier that's used for describing the color portion of an image was all in sync with all the cameras and switcher because if it wasn't you would find the colors would drift you would be displaying the wrong hues things wouldn't look quite right so the gen lock signal itself actually contains this color burst in order to make sure that that timing that timing on all devices for displaying color is perfectly lined up this signal can actually be used on standard definition a standard definition as well as high definition in terms of syncing up cameras that said though it only works for frame rates that are either 30 or 60. so if you're trying to shoot something in 24 frames per second uh it won't work you won't be able to synchronize that's another thing i should mention so the timing signal that you're using to synchronize all your your hardware has to be at the same frame rate that you're wanting to shoot so if you're shooting at 29.97 frames per second like i am here you can put you can use a timing source that's 29.97 frames per second like this blackworks generator that same signal can actually be used for 60 frames per second as well uh was not originally designed for that but it does work because it is outputting 60 fields per second and high definition devices know how to take that information from these original black burst generators and use that to line up their timing for the high definition 60 frames per second signal as well all right here is another device that can actually be used for generating a timing gen lock signal and this is a hyperdex studio mini so this is a video playback and recorder but it has on the back reference in and reference out connections and this device when no reference is connected to the input it actually does generate its own reference output and you can use that to change other devices in order to make sure that they're all lined up properly now you also find some more reference in and out on blackmagic switchers at least the the non-mini switchers so anything above that and other recorders and sometimes you find it on monitors and other things as well but i'm using this here today as a way of generating a timing signal a gen lock signal because it has that capability and i actually don't own anything else that can do high definition uh try will sync signals right now if we take a look at the signal coming out of this it is again showing us a blackbird signal and that's the way that this device actually behaves when you first power it up so even though it's not would normally be used for standard definition for high definition or for uhd it defaults to outputting black bursts it's a standard definition signal on the reference output that all changes when i press in this case i have some video clips on an sd card that are in 1080p at 29.97 frames per second so if i press the play button on there that's going to change the nature of the signal with that video playing the device is actually outputting a tri-level sync signal this is a very different signal and it's the signal that we would normally use when we're talking when we're working in high definition or uhd either one so this signal looks very different we call it tri-level sync because it actually you can see it has three different levels there's a positive there's there's your ground and then there's your negative and this signal is being output for every line of video and if you look down here in the lower right you can see that it's not being output at 33.7 kilohertz so 33 times 33 000 times per second which roughly equates to 1080 lines of video plus some extra lines times 30 frames per second so this thing signal we're operating right now is specifically for 1080p at 29.97 frames per second and we would take the signal and connect that into the back of the switcher connect that into the reference input or gen lock input on cameras and any playback devices like the hyperdex studio mini connect that signals a reference in and then all those devices will be lined up now in addition to that i should mention that we know that electrical signals don't travel instantaneously they travel below the speed of light and when you're talking about long cable runs the amount of time that it takes for a signal to run down a cable from your gen lock source to a camera and back can be significant and so most of most camera devices that actually have gen lock will have the option to adjust that timing a little bit so you can make sure that the signal coming from the camera actually does arrive at the switcher at the appropriate time and not too late based on that length of cable that you have running between those so anyway um so yes this is a tri-level sync signal it's basically pulses that are output for each scan line and then i'm going to adjust the scope here and let you see what happens at the beginning of a video frame so the signal i showed you a minute ago was actually the signal output for all of the for each new new scan line so each basically horizontal line of video it's part of a part of the picture so that signal on a 1080p signal is outputting roughly 33 000 times per second so 1080 plus some extra lines for other signal information times 30 frames per second gives you roughly 33 33 000 per second and what i have on screen here is basically five or yeah five of those pulses uh for starting new lines but you can see that there are some of them there that are actually in the signal where the signal is staying low and these are the pulses that are used for starting a new frame video in fact if i zoom out a little bit you can see that there's five of them so there's five lines uh where that signal stays low and that basically tells any connected device i need you to start the top of a video frame right now so the cameras that are attached we'll see that and know that it's time to start a new frame and then whenever it sees the pulse without that low signal it knows that it needs to output a new line a new row of video so but that's basically the gist of tri-level sync so it's a signal that's being generated by some device and sent all your cameras and switcher in order to make sure that all of them are generating the same portion of the video picture at the same time one of the advantages to having gen lock is not only is the picture information arriving at a switcher at the same time it also makes sure that all of your cameras are outputting the exact same number of frames over the same period of time so even though we have our camera set to 29.97 or 50 frames per second or whatever that timing is not perfect and you'll find that if you're recording over 10 20 30 minutes an hour or whatever so several hours that your cameras even though they might even be the same model might drift apart from one another and like by the end of an hour you might find that one camera is output five frames more than another having gen lock actually prevents that so if you're in a situation where you do have drift you need to line up multiple cameras in post production it really helps to have cameras gen locked now not all cameras have gen lock in fact the cameras that i'm using here the cameras that i normally use as part of doing my video production don't have gen lock and so that's the situation that we kind of have to deal with if you're dealing with a camera that does not have the gen lock capability you're going to see some drift and you have to figure out a way to deal with that and very often what i do is i speed up speed it up or slow it down but yeah with gen lock that wouldn't be a requirement so you always know for sure that all of your cameras and your switcher output are basically outputting at the same exact rate and it will experience no drift over time whatsoever so what does it actually look like when it comes time to connect a camera to a gen lock source here i have an ursa mini 4k and it has on the side a combination reference in and time code in you don't normally see devices do that on one single connector but the ursa minis do so you use one connector to either do a gen lock signal or time code i'll get to the time code portion in a little bit for right now we're going to connect in the time reference output from the hyperdex studio mini into the reference in on the camera and what i'm going to do is i'm going to what you what you see the video coming out of the camera and as i connect this signal to the reference in after a bit of time you'll see on screen there we go so you notice right here it says ref and so this camera right now is locked to the timing information coming out of my hyperdeck studio mini so you have to make sure that you are at least on the same frame rate and depending on the device you might have to be in the same resolution as right as well so right now my hyper deck is playing at 1080p 29.97 in my ursa mini is actually set at ultra hd 2160p at 29.97 frames per second but it was still able to walk to that reference so depending on what device you're using you might be able to use a high definition source to sync a 4k camera but you we know we can also use standard definition black bursts in order to sync a camera as well so if i was to substitute in my blackboard generator here instead of the hyperdeck it would the camera would still be able to sync but at this point we know that the camera is outputting at the exact same frame rate as our sync our gen lock source all right here's one other quick demonstration i've got my black burst generator hooked up again this time i've got it hooked up to a video input on this old school analog video monitor and so if i actually switch as i mentioned if i switch over to that input you'll see very briefly that it says 480i so it is it thinks it's receiving a video signal when really it's just a gen lot signal blackberry signal one other thing i wanted to point out before i put this monitor away uh and on the a lot of the old school professional video monitors they would have this jack here which is an external synchronization input and you would connect your black burst signal to that and that way you could actually check to see if your video input signal coming out on the input was in time with the gen lock signal so you can connect your video input on the input one connect your gen lock on the external sync and then you press external sync button on the front and that causes the monitor to ignore the timing information from the video input and use the external sync instead and if your picture looked right it wasn't out of sync it wasn't in the wrong position and the colors were correct you knew that that video source was actually timed correctly and the gen lock was working in our modern hd and uhd digital world we don't have to worry about that external sync stuff anymore but it's kind of interesting to know where we came from all right with gen lock out of the way let's talk about time code this is another synchronization signal but it's very different and people do tend to get the too confused so if you've been paying attention you may notice that i've had this monitor going over here and it's displaying time code down at the bottom that time code is coming out of my atem 2 me production studio switcher so that that switcher is generating time code so what is time code it's actually just a number which tells you how many hours minutes seconds and frames have elapsed from some arbitrary point in time that point in time might be the time we powered on a switcher like in the case here saying it's been on for one hour 15 minutes 36 seconds and zero frames or whatever or it might be since we started recording or it could be it could be the time of day or it could be some other arbitrary point in time as well so say for example you're shooting a music video you could use time code to represent how far into the song you are so at that point when you're pulling all your footage together and you want to sync it up for editing it's able to use the time code to make sure that you're always lined up so that whatever portion of the song the artist is singing at any given portion time is exactly what you're seeing on screen so but that's that's really all the time code is time code is not used to adjust the timing of anything inside of the camera other than a clock that's displayed and that time is recorded as part of the beginning of each frame of video so that said let's take a look at some examples of time code so first of all we got this one that's over here and this time code is coming from my switcher i'm going to switch over to my camera here and you can see that it's out that's showing time code as part of the indicators there at the top of the screen so in this case uh it's been 18 minutes and 44 seconds since i powered on the camera and that's basically just counting up it's continuing to count up over time so you're seeing that hours minutes seconds and frames i'm running at 2160p at 29.97 frames per second and so you see that the frame number there it's going 0 1 2 3 4 etc up through 29 and that's resetting back down to zero so therefore you're seeing that it's running at 30 frames per second now if you adjust your frame rate that number will change if you're shooting 24 frames per second it'll go up to 23 and then reset back to zero there's one big exception to that and that is when you go to frame rates that are higher than 30 frames per second so if you're shooting at 50 or 60 or even 48 or whatever simply time code does not actually support that and so we've kind of had to do a little bit of a workaround in order to actually represent the number of frames when we're shooting at frame rates higher than 30. and this ends up working out okay because with old and old-school analog video it was even though it was 30 frames per second or in case of a lot of the rest of the world 25 frames per second it was interlaced video and each one of those frames had an upper field and a lower field and cameras are able to take advantage of that and so if we're say looking if we're on frame 48 out of 60 the time code would show 24 frames and then it would be the upper field and if and then we get to the next next variant frame of video frame number 49 that becomes the lower field of frame number 24. so it's tricky but it actually does work out so we're still able to use that old system with modern video equipment even though our frame rates are considerably higher than what simply time code was actually designed to handle how is time code transmitted from one device to another well there's a couple ways that are used commonly today the one that i'm using to display time code over here uh that's embedded in the sdi video signal that's coming out of my switcher so it's just part of that digital signal it's stored as some of that binary data the digital data that's coming out of the of the switcher so as part of that sdi video stream there are some bits in there that are basically saying i am currently on 1 hour 5 minutes 36 seconds and 13 frames or whatever but the other way we actually do this is with audio of all things and so simply time code has something that is called ltc or linear time code which can be used to represent that simply time code information and for devices that don't have native support for time code like the cameras that i use here for my channel and that i happen to use for my productions they don't have a time code input but we can still take advantage of the fact that we can use time code because time code can be represented as an audio signal now i'm going to let you hear some of that and a few bonus points anybody who actually decodes this information all right so what you just heard there that is simply time code expressed as format it's called linear time code and we can embed that into any device that can record audio and i'm going to do a video here really soon where i demonstrate how to take advantage of that in order to sync up cameras that don't support a time code input not just not just cameras but audio audio sources as well so stay tuned and make sure you subscribe to the channel in order to watch that video because it's going to be very interesting i'm going to demonstrate some techniques that are not commonly used in order to distribute time code to device multiple devices on in a very budget friendly manner without having to make a heavy investment in equipment and then use that time code information to sync up multiple video clips and audio in your video editor so stay tuned for that now other devices like this camera actually do have time code inputs and so if we take a look here on the side a little bit hard to see but the third bnc connector down here it says refn tcn and tcn means time code in and so this camera actually knows how to receive one of those simply timecode signals the ltc audio signals on that input and then it will basically override its internal timecode information with that information so that your camera is recording the same time code information as everything else i'm going to connect that up and actually show you what that looks like now as mentioned linear time code is just an audio signal and so what i've done is i've actually put the time code output of my video switcher my atem switcher on a dante input on my network and so i'm able to take that timecode timecode data and then distribute that anywhere i want so i've got here a automate avo or avio adapter and this is set to receive that audio signal coming from that device and so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take this cable xlr on one side and then rca on the other plug in that output and then i have to use an rca to bnc adapter and what i'm going to do is i'm going to take this bnc connector and plug that into the tc time code input on the camera and pay close attention what's going on up here near the top of the screen on the camera we're going to see some changes happen there right away so i plug in the signal and bingo there we go so now the camera is using the time code information that's outputting for my switcher through my dante network in order to time stamp all of the recordings that i'm going to make so you'll see that time value there is one hour 26 minutes basically indicates how long it's been since my switcher was turned on not how long it's been since my camera was turned on this is what we call jam syncing and what i can do at this point is actually even disconnect this and the camera will still keep counting at that same time code so even without an active signal the camera will keep going if i turn off the camera it will reset and start over but as long as i leave the power of the camera turned on once i've given it a time code signal it will continue counting in that same time code and therefore it will stay at least relatively in close sync with the other devices that are part of my video network but this is where i have to kind of point out some of the caveats associated with using time code because timecode is not adjusting the video timing within the camera they will still get out of sync if you got a camera that instead of outputting exactly 29.97 frames per second or recording 29.97 frames per second it does 29.98 frames per second over time it's still going to drift out of sync with your other cameras so time code allows you to line up the beginning of video clips in your editor but it doesn't do anything whatsoever for making sure that over time this they stay in sync that's where gen lock comes in so if you need your cameras to always stay exactly lined up you still need gen lock and then time code can be used to line up the positions on the timeline of the different clips so that you're seeing the same video from the same point in time when it was recorded so in that way time code is very useful for editing but it does absolutely nothing for making sure that over time cameras and whatnot stay in sync so they actually work separately and together in order to make sure that your timing on your devices your video your audio etc actually lines up so yeah very interesting now i'm going to show you one more example of hooking up a device for time code and with another camera all right so this camera the sony pxw x70 does not have a time code input on it so what we have to do is we have to use other methods in order to get time code in there what i'm going to use here i'll show you this from above here this is a device called a tentacle sync this is a little time code generator uh it also has the ability to sync to an external time code and it does that through an in an input here on the bottom again timecode is just audio so it's really easy to to use normal cables in order to produce that so right now with it flashing in the green mode right here it's actually generating time code what i can do is use the included cable take the output of that and then plug that into the microphone input on the side of the camera here so at this point even though the camera's internal time code doesn't match the time code that's on the technical sync that that audio signal is being recorded on the left channel of the audio and then we can use the software in order to decode that and then turn that into a matching time code for all the other devices that we have so in that way we're able to include time code on any device that doesn't support it even audio recorders so very often when working in film a guy who's doing audio will use a device like this or a recorder that actually natively supports time code record a separate track on the audio recorder that includes just the time code information and then in post production you're able to decode that audio signal that linear time code signal use that to modify the metadata for the file and then your video editor can use that to line up all your different all your different sequences from all your different sources i should mention that this camera actually does have some time code capabilities but it does not have the ability to sync to an external time code so if we go into the menu here we can display timecode we can set a preset but we're not able to take that from from an external source so essentially that makes this form this uh timecode feature on the camera next to worthless in my opinion now not all equipment out there has time code inputs and outputs on it so like for the blackmagic atm switcher line the 2mm production studio and the 4me production studio have timecode inputs and outputs on xlr connectors but their other switchers do not so it really varies and some products have that capability and others do not you'll also find it included on two different types of connectors so it's an audio so you'll very often find it on xlrs but you'll also find it on bnc connectors as well as mentioned earlier when i was displaying time code on my ursa mini that one has an uh bnc connection for the time code input on that they're the same signal it's just on a different connector and so you're able to use some very inexpensive cables in order to adapt from one to the other the technical sync i mentioned uses one eighth inch or 3.5 millimeter jacks but again it's just the same signal another device that interestingly has time code capability are some of the teranex mini devices from blackmagic if we go into the menu on this audio menu and one of the output options so normally you would output analog audio but you're gonna you can do aes ebu or you can do time code and so this device will actually extract the time code information from the sdi video signal coming in and out put that time code on the on the right channel audio output so if you need to get time code to a remote location and you don't have something like dante you can use one of one of these devices to do it now devices that have a time code input they typically support jam syncing so basically all you do is very temporarily plug in a timecode signal into that input and then the device will reset its time code to match the signal that's coming in to that input and then it'll continue to increase that time value on its own that way you can disconnect the time code input and then keep going so in that in this case what i did with my tentacles thing is i took the output of my technical sync plug that into the time code input of my atm switcher and all of a sudden now the atm switcher is running the exact same time code as my tentacle sync even though they're no longer connected tentacle sync time code here matches the time code coming out of my switcher exactly now i want to eliminate some of the confusion around time code there is something that's called drop frame time code now the name is very confusing so let me clear that up a little bit so with ntsc video instead of running at whole number integer frame rates like 24 30 it actually runs at 23.976 or 29.97 now what that means is the video actually does run a little bit slower than the integer frame rate now what happens is if your time code is not adjusted to make up for that difference what you'll find is your time codes slowly drifting over time from what time you actually see on your clock so what we use what something is called drop frame now no actual video frames are dropped it's just a way of changing the numbering so essentially what happens with drop frame is the beginning of every minute except those that are divisible by 10 we just skip the very first two frame numbers so frame 0 and frame 1 for each minute don't exist it just skips right over them so if you're shooting at 29.97 it goes from frame 29 to frame 2 at minute 1 2 three four five six seven eight nine but not minutes 0 10 20 and so forth so it's just a numbering thing no video information is actually lost and the reason we do this is to make sure that time code advances more or less at the same frame rate at the same rate as a real clock hopefully that will clear up some of the confusion around gen lock and time code they're both synchronization signals but they serve very different purposes and one is not a substitute for the other very often if you really want to have signals stay in sync you want both let me mention one other type of technology that's used associated with synchronization and this is specific to audio and this is called word clock so when we have digital audio like aes ebu or aes3 and when you have audio going between multiple different devices you need for all those devices to be synchronized one with one another otherwise you find that when a bit comes in it's not lined up with when the device is expecting it to come in and all of a sudden the data gets distorted and you end up with actual audio distortion and or complete loss of signal the solution for this is something called word clock so you'll have one device in your audio setup which generates a word clock signal and then you connect that to the word clock input of all the other devices that have it that way everything on your in your audio setup all your all your audio equipment is transmitting and receiving all your audio data your digital audio data at the same time stays in sync no distortion no drift if you start recording on one device at one time another device at the same time hours later those those samples will line up perfectly if you're able to use word clock we're seeing fewer and fewer devices actually support word clock these days a lot of times devices are actually able to derive word clock from having a digital input in the case of an audio system like i'm using with dante the word clock is still there but it's handled on the dante network instead of being generated internally in the device so i should do another video about dante synchronization and clock signals but for now just remember that when you have multiple digital audio devices communicating digitally this only applies to digital communication analog it doesn't doesn't come into play at all but we have audio devices communicating digitally and they support word clock you probably should actually connect up the word clock connections between your different devices and what i've got here is i have this is a motu mark of the unicorn audio interface for computer and it happens to have a word clock output on it so i'm going to show you what that signal actually looks like all right here you go we're looking at a word clock signal coming out of the motu and right now i have it set to 48 kilohertz sampling rate and so what we're seeing here is a pulse up down a complete cycle 48 000 times per second and basically any connected device will know hey this is the rate that i need to be digitizing analog audio and this is the rate i need to be sending audi i'm sending digital audio out my outputs and so it's a good idea again to make sure that if you have word clock support on your devices you actually connect it up and use it in order to avoid those digital audio artifacts that can happen when things get out of sync now how do these actually relate to one another well in a fully functioning studio you'll have either one device that's generating all of these signals your gen lock your time code and or word clock or devices that are synchronized with one another that are doing so that way it doesn't matter what device you're recording on what your whether it's audio or video or whatever when it comes time to actually sync those things up in editing there's no trouble doing so because everything was recording at the same rate frames last exact same amount of time the amount number of frames recorded over a period of time is exactly the same across all your devices your audio doesn't drift your video doesn't drift everything lines up perfectly so in a broadcast facility that's very much the way that they handle that they'll have a master sync device master clock it generates those signals and then those are distributed to all the equipment so for those who have the budget to do so it's a great thing to do but if you don't you may find yourself running into signal drift issues so anyway i'm going to do a future video here pretty soon on this channel where i walk through the process of using time code to sync up video from multiple cameras as well as a video switcher so make sure you're subscribed to watch that that'll be coming pretty soon plan on doing that here in the next week or two but i'll go walk through the whole process and demonstrate some ways of getting time code to cameras and whatnot that are kind of unconventional and probably save you some money as compared to buying dedicated hardware specifically for that purpose so anyway that's going to do it for right now so if you have any questions about gen lock or time code or word clock or anything related to those you can leave those in the comment section down below this video or better yet join me over on my discord channel djp dot li discord and i will have a channel set up there specifically talking about synchronization signals and so you can ask your question there and you'll be able to receive answers from not just me but other people who work in video production and some of which have more experience than i do and can better answer the questions than i'm able to as well so so if you're new to the channel please consider subscribing i do video production related content about once a week if you want even more than that you can sign up as a paying member of the channel through the join button down below or join over here on patreon in this quick link that is djp dot li patreon so that's going to do it for now so thanks everyone for watching and have a fantastic day

Channel: Doug Johnson Productions

Views: 7,369

Keywords: Doug Johnson Productions, DJP, Live Video Production, Event Video Production, Orem, Utah, Live Streaming, Internet Streaming, livestream, livestreaming, live video, blackmagic design, atem, timecode, time code, genlock, bi-level sync, tri-level sync, camera synchronization, reference in, ref in, ltc, smpte timecode, vitc, wordclock, digital audio, camera sync

Id: yUn8mMQ0JGg

Length: 39min 11sec (2351 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 06 2021