We are adding the house time-of-day timecode to FOH for audio this week. Initially this will only be in the east auditorium, but it will most likely also arrive in the west in the future. We’re adding timecode primarily to stamp the time-of-day to our multitrack recordings on Sunday. We’ll also be looking at ways we can use this with the Venue.

Unfortunately, there is a downside in this addition because we can no longer easily trigger Pro Tools to start and stop recording via the Venue. I’m working on a solution, but for now we will have to resort to old school methods of starting Pro Tools. This is due to the fact that we will no longer be pressing PLAY when using timecode. Instead we need to take Pro Tools ONLINE to sync it to the incoming timecode.

We will continue to manually record our Wednesday night rehearsals. Sunday mornings, however, will rely on timecode. Recording with timecode is very similar to manually recording. Once your tracks are armed for record simply follow these steps:

1. Arm the session for record by clicking the Record button on the transport button.

2. Click the ONLINE button to chase timecode.

When you click the ONLINE button, Pro Tools will start chasing timecode as soon as it reads and locates to the current location. One of the benefits of using timecode for recording is you will no longer need to move the playhead to a new location before you start recording; Pro Tools will automatically locate to the correct location in the timeline once it goes ONLINE. In the event that timecode fails in Pro Tools, please make sure to manually start recording.

Pro Tools Stopped

Pro Tools Running

In addition to Pro Tools, we are also adding timecode to the Venue. The current setup offers a good way to check if Pro Tools is recording since the Venue is reading timecode generated by Pro Tools. When Pro Tools is stopped, the MTC READ window on the Venue will show no time code. When Pro Tools is running, you will see timecode running in the Venue’s MTC READ window.

If you have any questions about using timecode at FOH, please don’t hesitate to ask.

1. Jorge Corvea says:

   January 22, 2010 at 8:47 am

   That’s great Dave, also,you problably know this already but there are two other ways that maybe could be usefull.
   Entering the time (in the Main Time window) when you want PT to start recording by itself, making the session start time (in the Session Setup Window) 30 sesonds or so before PT will get into record.Problem with this is that instead of using the same session to track the 3 services we might need to create sessions for each service.
   The other way could be using machine control with a 422 and use what PM5D has (user define key) to trigger PT to record.
   I’m not sure if Venue does that.