Hello, Im trying to sync two td’s on different computers with frame accuracy, Im doing it as such: two computers with audioins receiving smpte signal from third independent laptop. This signal is then converted into frame index via ltc node. And movieins use this index to play. Anyway it takes significant amount of time to switch to the next movie with this method. (smpte track reloads on switching for frame index of new movie to always be 1)
What’s your experience synchronizing two or more td’s?
Any help or suggestions will be highly appreciated, thank you.
The method you use to sync TDs shouldn’t have an affect on how long it takes to switch between movies. How long is it taking? You may need to have two Movie In TOPs, one with the current movie and one with the next movie so it’s ready to go when you switch. You can use the preloadmovie command to make a Movie In TOP open it’s open movie with minimal impact on playback.
I have n buttons in my setup: run movie1, run movie2…run movie n. Each button runs script: reload audiostream (smpte track), run movie n, unload movie n-1, preload movie n+1. If in moviein play method set to sequential it takes less than half second to begin play next movie. If the play method is set to specify index and index is received from the audiostream with smpte track, it takes 0,5 to 1,5 seconds
I wanted to try that option as well, but as there is no asio support, i excepted the audio buffer size to be too large to get perfect frame sync. what’s your experience?
syncing with ltc is not very accurate. When we tested it, the difference between two td’s playing same movie was between 1 to 2 frames and it was floating each time we retrigger the movie.
The only way around it was to use slider of my nanokontrol and to fine tune frame difference on the fly))) But this is, of course, definitely not the solution.
I know that syncing with smpte track is the weakest point of my whole setup but I cant find a way to avoid using it.
p.s. english is not my native language, so feel free to ask any questions if my answer confusing you)
and converted to midi first, then Midi in to both touch(with a splitter) - wouldnt you be doing your audio buffer in a hardware scenario, and touch would be only dealing with slimmer midi timecode? we used a1x4 midi splitter on DJ Shadow tour to send concurrent sync to several pc’s and it seem to work decent with several copies of Ableton Live and touch visuals.
Seems to me having 2 audio ins processing would be more likely to have drift/recoup than 2 midi ins (or maybe even one midi in and one touchout/touchin link between the 2 machines)
sorry if this is way out of the context, but like I said it’s been yrs since I even thought about timecode
I would think it would be worth trying (if you havent already) using 1 audioin on one pc, but tying the second and first pc together via touchout/touchin, since this wouldn’t require new hardware or software reconfig. But I am just a ‘guessing neophyte’ at this point
Exploring this topic I have found one thing in TD which is strange to me. In moviein top if you choose “specify index” as a play method, default option of representing index number is frames. However, if you change it to “Index” FPS rate in TD will burst, is it a bug? Because it seems that when set to frames moviein somehow recalculates data he receiveing as an index from the ltc node. Anyone know something about it? Because I didnt see anything about it in help wiki page.
p.s. cod65 I dont have access to our lab to fully test your recomendation right now but I will definitelly keep them in mind, thank you!
, but if you managed to find a cheap hardware converter like :