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SMPTE Time Code Summits will influence "creation of a new “Time Label” standard." So who's going?


Jim Feeley

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From SMPTE:

SMPTE Time Code Summit

SMPTE will host a series of Time Code Summits to gather user community feedback that will contribute to the creation of a new “Time Label” standard. As the next-generation standard to SMPTE Time Code™, widely viewed as one of the most important standards in the audio/video industry, the new Time Label standard will address the continuing, new, and emerging requirements of handling media across the cinema, broadcast, theatrical, music recording, concert, live entertainment, and theme park markets.

Innovative media techniques such as higher-frame-rate (HFR) video and media over internet protocol (IP) are testing the limits of the original SMPTE Time Code standard, first introduced in 1974. The time has come to revise the standard to keep pace with new technologies and workflows. With a better understanding of how today’s professionals are using Time Code on a daily basis, SMPTE will be positioned to enable an efficient move into Time Labels.

[snip]

“If your job depends on Time Code, then you have something to gain by attending one of our Time Code Summits,” said Howard Lukk, director of engineering and standards, SMPTE. “These meetings mark a significant step toward building a new version of what is arguably one of the most widely used SMPTE standards. They will play an essential role in ensuring that we receive the feedback from a broad range of users to create an improved standard that will stand the test of time. We encourage the user community to take advantage of this unique opportunity to contribute to the standards-creation process.”

The first Time Code Summit will be held on 10 Oct. at 6 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. The second Summit will take place on 1 Nov. at 10 a.m. at BT Tower in London. A third Summit is planned for New York in November, with more locations in consideration. The Summits are hosted by SMPTE Director of Engineering and Standards, Howard Lukk with support from the local SMPTE Sections.

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More info and links to register for the (apparently free) meetings here:

https://www.smpte.org/lifewithoutsmpte/SMPTETimeCode

Anyone here planning on attending these?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I attended.  The Time Label spec is in very early stages, SMPTE is trying to get al lot of information from end users about what parts of the current Timecode spec they can remove (e.g Color Frame flag), and what needs to be added (e.g support for any frame rate from <1frame/sec to 1000frame/sec or more), etc.

We did a online poll for everyone in the audience (about 80 - 100 people there), they will make this available online for everyone to add their votes to as well (there were 66 questions).

Currently the only thing known is that the timestamp itself will be based on PTP, which is an 80 bit value, accurate to 1 nanosecond, and covers 137 some years.

SMPTE is heavily video oriented, so the basic idea was that each frame of video would have a time label packet, but for audio, we'll probably end up with a single new chunk at the start of the BWAV file.

They look to be developing the spec till around mid 2017, then expect to see first products with it late 2017 and early 2018.

About 70% of the Los Angeles Attendees answered the first question "what is your role" with "post production".  Audio pros were vastly underrepresented, as were theme park uses.

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Thanks, Tom.

I was all set to go, but I messed up my knee real bad the weekend before, and couldn't leave the house… Pretty bummed I couldn't make it.

I know it's early days, but I'm curious whether it'd be possible to update current recorders and syncboxes to the new standard with a firmware update. Were there any manufacturers present?

Cheers,

BK

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Thanks Tom. Interesting stuff. BTW, here's info on how to sign up for the London and NYC meetings...plus a link to an online survey.

 

 

 

 

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16 hours ago, al mcguire said:

Says I've already taken the survey, think I'd remember that

Looks like they're generating a unique URL for everyone who clicks on the link from their page to the survey. I guess to control survey abuse? So I unwittingly posted a unique link that you (and even I now) can't use. Oops. Sorry.

I edited my post #7 just above to go to the SMPTE.org page that has the link to the survey. 

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On 10/14/2016 at 7:46 PM, Blas Kisic said:

Thanks, Tom.

I was all set to go, but I messed up my knee real bad the weekend before, and couldn't leave the house… Pretty bummed I couldn't make it.

I know it's early days, but I'm curious whether it'd be possible to update current recorders and syncboxes to the new standard with a firmware update. Were there any manufacturers present?

Cheers,

BK

I think there were some camera/editing software company representative there, someone was very knowledgeable about video file formats. My feeling is that time labels are by nature a network thing, so if you have a product with e,g. AES67 streaming input/output, that would be a candidate for updating. There will probably be new network-edge products that convert to/from Network/Time label and LTC.

Since the majority of questions related to Post-production, we'll probably see this build out from the TV station's internal network, where Time Labels will help them move from LTC embedded in 3G video to all network streaming protocols,  then move to production equipment later as it becomes easier to feed in (ingest) files with Time label chunks.  

A recorder (camera or audio) would need a GPS receiver or network connection in order to sync up initially, so that it could generate an accurate Time label chunk from the PTP clock .    Doing PTP accurately requires CPUs with IEEE1588 built in, so there will be some products that can't be improved even if they have network connections.

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