Milliseconds or Frames - More Precise for Video Work?

[gerald-wei]

Hello,
We use OnTime for our live TV broadcasts and it do a nice job.
OnTime serves as a guide for vMix (our video and graphics software) to cut to a camera input or play a file.

The content team creates the sequence in an Excel spreadsheet, which we then implement in OnTime.

Our problem is that most videofiles end between two full seconds. Therefore, we have to manually check that each file ends exactly on a full second. Otherwise, we get either a freeze frame or skipped frames.

Is there a way to work more precise with ontime, for example, with milliseconds or frames?

[cpvalente]

Hi @gerald-wei , thank you for reaching out

Ontime's times are all in milliseconds, however we dont expose this level of control to the users

We have looked before into having smaller units like ms or frames.
The conclusion was usually that this would add a level of complexity that we could not justify, but maybe it is time to challenge this decision?

I feel like milliseconds would be the natural way to go, it would also mean we dont have to deal with different timecode formats. However, this would leave users to have to make the translations themselves which may defeat the purpose of the change.

Would you be available to chat through this and spec out a solution?
You can find our contacts and link to the discord server in the the docs

[StVMartin]

Hi if I could ad my thoughts, As an event show director/caller I often need to start timecode lines and they work with frames ideally. This ideally should alow extra timelines to run. Ideally several that are linked to the cues, so that wen a mediaplayer like Disguise sends out TC it can recalculate quickly changes and indicates logic errors or consequences.
In this case an extra output screen with all the timecodes to share with techs would be top to have.

[alex-Arc]

This ideally should alow extra timelines to run

could you explain this
are you thinking of timelines in Ontime?

[StVMartin]

Well for instance OT works on real time basis. When I do shows very often these run on smpte timecode or similar timecodes. When blocks need to change or their duration changes what often is the case. It would be handy to have the option in a row to add like 2 or 3 self couting timecode fields, that can start whenever you want them in the rundown and at the jour you indicate, for instance: 01:00:00:00 for the opening lightshow combining laser and video, 02:00:00:00 for the big moment of videomapping, laser and fireworks… like this in one run down uou could have several technical timecode timelines running linked to the OT realtime. If operator/editor needs to shift a cue automatically all smpte timeline elements either shift along or recalculate. Is that more clear? At this time this timecode could possibly benlinked to for instance lighting console, disguis media server, fireworks etc. and trigger timeline starting cue. Or even when that stays manually fir any reason it still allows the show caller to prepare in all deyail the timecode show parts. Now for instance i need to go to excel to calculate these and type them into the notes field. This field does not valculate and isnsmall to ready. Also these times ideally can become screens for operators or can also appear in the existing screens when selected. Is this more clear?