Ex-BBC man develops advanced timecode sync tool, writes Erica Basnicki
AFTER SPENDING 20 years as a BBC audio supervisor and freelance sound recordist and sound supervisor, Paul Scurrell had grown tired of constantly swapping out pieces of kit to accommodate different filming scenarios, and the time involved in manually re-syncing sound to picture on multi-camera shoots with multi-tracked audio. “There’s only been a few systems on the market that can give you a nice long-range timecode link between the camera and the sound person. The ones that are out there are only single-channel versions,” he explained. “That’s fine for most of the time but if you turn up at a location and you’ve got a few sound recordists there transmitting and receiving timecode on the same frequency, it all gets a bit messy.”
Buddy audio pros
In 2010 Scurrell set about
creating what would eventually become the Timecode Buddy system: a multichannel timecode transceiver as well as a time-of- day timecode generator housed within the same product to avoid having to swap kit. He recruited Paul Bannister, a specialist in bespoke PCB design/firmware and a software programmer, who is now technical development manager for Timecode Buddy. Bannister suggested adding a WiFi chip, a key moment in the product’s development. “We suddenly realised that
if we had all of that built in together (a timecode generator, timecode link, and WiFi capabilites) into the product we’d have something unique and certainly something that no one has ever tried before,” said Scurrell.
“[The system] has to do what it’s supposed to do because people like myself are going to be using it and relying on it for their livelihoods”
Paul Scurrell
for
The Buddy master: Who says sound pros have no style?
The full system begins with the Timecode Master, a multichannel timecode transceiver and programmable timecode generator, with integrated WiFi connectivity. The Timecode Tx is a miniature multichannel timecode transmitter, allowing the user to transmit timecode from a camera or receive it from the Master. Rounding up the system is the iOS app: the only DigiSlate app that’s constantly re-synced from a hardware device via WiFi. The system provides audio
professionals with a simple, and more importantly reliable (reportedly less than one half-frame drift a day), way of syncing audio to video in a variety of filming situations, and avoids the slog of manually re-syncing in post-production. It’s a piece of kit Scurrell says
he had been “crying out for” for several years, and was designed with the benefit of his experience as a sound recordist in mind.
“Most people in the film and TV industry are self-employed, and you’re only as good as your last job,” he explained. “You’ve just got to be able to rely on the kit that you’ve got. The first and foremost thing for me was that it’s got to do what it says on the tin. It’s got to be reliable, robust, solid. All the extra bells and whistles we’ve managed to achieve, they can’t sacrifice the core workings of it. It has to do what it’s supposed to do because people like myself are going to be using it and relying on it for their livelihoods, really.” Recently, the wireless functionality of the Timecode Buddy system has been added to American PureBlend Software’s
MovieSlate app, which is a combination slate, clapper board, and note logger. The company was nominated recently for a CAS Award for MovieSlate’s Sound Department plug-in used to generate daily sound reports. “MovieSlate has become an
industry standard,” said Scurrell. “It’s by far the best app of its kind on the market and really sets the bar for this kind of application. There was no point in Timecode Systems reinventing the wheel by developing our own paid logging app, it made far more sense to collaborate with the market leader instead.” European resellers will be announced during this year’s NAB conference, though orders for the Timecode Buddy system are currently being fulfilled via the company’s website. www.timecodebuddy.co.uk