Time code and frame per frame

[infinitempg]

Kind of a newbie here but have a more engineering related request for VLC that fits right in here. VLC displays the playback time of the video but the smallest unit displayed is seconds. Would like to use VLC for determining time of different machine functions and nice to be able to frame step to accurately mark a spot in a video, but some of the things we do we need a display of ms (milliseconds). Is there any way to change the format of VLC to display the time scale more accurately?

Installed the Jump to Time extension and that can display the time of the playback in the 00:00:00,000 format which displays accurate time to 3 decimal places (milliseconds). Kind of crazy that an extension can show down to the millisecond where you are stopped in a playback but can't find a way to display this actively on the VLC screen. Can actively show frame count with Time v3.2 but that doesn't display playback time.

From this thread it appears there is a lot of desire to have frame count and accurate time actively displayed during playback. Any way to achieve that or someone add that as an extension???? Please? Pretty please..... :O/

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Yes. The issue is that VLC is not 100% frame-accurate. We will get there and implement timecodes.

[Scrapsdad]

This is from an old set of posts, but it should be revisited........... Let's make time code clearer.... Two companies Memorex and CBS decided to join forces and design a Video Editing System. Both companies brought their expertise to bear on the problem, and a new company was born named CMX. The first concept that had to be tackled was being able to accurately edit to the frame of video. The early work of CMX was immediately picked up by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers or smpte, and smpte time code was invented. So you understand every video format has smpte time code in it's roots. This isn't something that has to be invented, smpte time code is already a part of the definition for every format of video. The reason smpte time code is so confusing is that from day one of conception there were different frame rates for video around the world, and to add to that you have drop frame formats (which was an attempt to keep time code matching time itself because America was using a 29.97 frames per second frame rate). This gets deep, and if you are interested there are great books on it. Evertz has a great 100 page book that really explains the concept of time code. All defined formats of video have the video frame written in smpte format in them. When video was recorded in analog the time code was inserted in the vertical interval of the recording, and also it was recorded on an separate audio track. If the tape was stopped or moving at some other speed than play, you could read the vertical interval time code (referred to as vitc). If the tape was in play mode, the time code could be read from the time code audio track. If you can read the frame, you are reading the time code that was placed in the frame when it was recorded. The numbers might be based on from start of video or an external time code generator, but time code is in the frame.