| Hey Andreas,
Here's what my colleagues told me:
The MCU protocol does _not_ include any timecode information. The MCU is purely a passive device, and it has a set of LCDs which we send text to. We send a textual representation of the current timeline's timecode if the user has selected timecode, but it is only loosely synchronized to actual playback; it's driven off of our UI playhead notification, and is thus delivered on the main thread "a long time" (in "real timecode" terms) after the actual timecode has passed by, and frames can quite easily be dropped from the notification.
For display purposes, it is "good enough", but it's nowhere near good enough to drive slaving a device, nor for generating MTC or LTC off of. You need accurate timing signal, generated off the actual playback threads, to generate reliable MTC or LTC. Furthermore, tying into the control surface interface would mean he'd have to parse the MCU stream coming through, and I'm not sure what he'd do when he sees something other than timecode text (say feet+frames or frames); also I would imagine it would mean a lot of configuration and confusion on behalf of the users, as to why this device would have to appear as a control surface.
The only way I know of that this could be accomplished today would be via a dedicated audio channel, and an AudioUnit that generates LTC (I've written one in the past, so I know it's possible). If the device in question had a USB interface to it from the computer, then that interface could include an USB audio class device that exposed a single channel, and that channel could consume the LTC and generate MTC (or whatever).
Then again, if it's just for display purposes, maybe emulating a MCU device would be good enough...
Hope this helps...
Cheers, Helena On Sep 22, 2007, at 2:19 AM, Andreas Kiel wrote: Hi Helena,
Thanks for the clarification.
Just to make sure - to get any kind of TC information from a FCP timeline I would need to use the "Mackie Control Universal" protocol. Or is there another way ?
Regards Andreas On 21.09.2007, at 21:10, Helena Ju wrote: Hi Andreas,We don't support MIDI TC, actually. It's a common misconception, since folks assume that control surfaces use MIDI TC. We use MIDI as a transport to talk to control surfaces, which converse with us in MIDI events. We speak to the surfaces using the "Mackie Control Universal" protocol owned by Mackie. Note that while MIDI timecode are realtime MIDI events, they are not part of the Mackie Control Universal protocol
Cheers, Helena
On Sep 21, 2007, at 4:09 AM, Andreas Kiel wrote: Sorry but I do have another question. I'm working on an app (as always based on XML) which allows auto-sync from multiple cameras and external sound. It works quite cool right now based upon simple FCP batch lists, though there is a lot of stuff missing as the needed hardware is not finished yet and we have to test more cameras. Something I just realized is that a part of that hardware could be the 'ultimate' widget for FCP as it allows to convert Midi TC to LTC and vice versa. If we would be able to get the Midi TC from FCP (or other Pro apps) we would be able to route this to an external (USB driven) TC display which can be attached to any monitor or just mounted on a wall below a projection or whatever. At IBC the people had been excited out that idea, especially because the device will be very cheap as standard unit (you can still spend some money on big TC displays). Maybe you can tell me how get the Midi TC, I've done some research but didn't find anything.
Kind regards Andreas
Andreas Kiel Spherico Nelkenstr. 25 D-76135 Karlsruhe Tel.: +49 (0)721 183 9753 eFax: +1 650 897 8094
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