Where Should Your Show's Timecode Come From?

The Question Nobody Asks Early Enough

Most timecode problems are decided long before anyone opens a settings panel. They are decided when someone chooses — usually by default, often without noticing — which device is the authority on where the show is.

There are four common answers. Each carries an assumption about the show, and the failures happen when the assumption stops being true.

Option 1 — The DAW

Reaper, Pro Tools, Ableton, Logic. The playback machine already knows its position and generates MTC or LTC from it.

Assumes: the audio is played back rather than performed.

This is the default recommendation in nearly every forum thread on the subject, and it deserves that status. The clock and the audio share a transport, so they cannot drift relative to each other — the single most valuable property in the whole list. Setup is a virtual MIDI port or a spare output. The person who built the session already understands it.

Where it stops: the DAW's position describes the DAW, not the show. If a musician extends a passage, if a segment is performed live over the top, if anything happens that the session does not contain, the clock keeps advancing through a timeline the room has left behind.

Option 2 — A show-control application

QLab and its peers. Cues own the timeline; timecode is generated alongside them.

Assumes: the show is a cue list, and that list is authoritative.

Structurally similar to the DAW with a different centre of gravity: the organising unit is a cue rather than a waveform, which matches how theatre actually thinks. If you already run the show from QLab, generating the clock there keeps one authority and one operator surface.

Where it stops: the same place as the DAW, for the same reason. A cue list is a timeline, and a timeline cannot describe an unscripted moment.

Option 3 — The console

The lighting console runs its own internal timecode and everything else follows.

Assumes: the show starts when the console says it starts.

Underrated. It removes the external cable, the second machine, and the whole class of "which box is master" faults. For a show that is fundamentally a lighting show with music under it, this is often the simplest correct architecture, and simple architectures survive contact with venues.

Where it stops: as soon as a second device with its own transport — a playback rig, a video server — also needs to be authoritative. Two transports, one show, and now somebody has to lose.

Option 4 — Something reading the live performance

A device derives position from what is actually happening: chasing a player that reports its own position, or analysing the audio directly, and generating real timecode from the result.

Assumes: nothing about a timeline, because there is not one.

This is the only option available when the show is performed rather than played back. It is also the least familiar, because the first three cover the majority of scripted work and most written guidance is about scripted work.

This is the case CueSync is built for. It chases CDJ position over PRO DJ LINK, MTC, LTC or TCNet with priority-based source selection and per-source offsets, and generates MTC, LTC, Art-Net timecode and TCNet out the other side. On a show with no timeline it is the clock; on a show that already has one it is a translator between formats.

Choosing

Two questions settle most cases. Does a timeline exist before the show starts? If not, only option 4 applies. If it does, who owns it? That device should be master; everything else chases.

Three Rules Regardless

One master. Everything else chases. Write it on the plot, tell the crew, and check it at the top of every venue day. Two generators on one network is the single most common cause of a show that rehearsed perfectly and failed live.

One frame rate, declared everywhere. Set it on the generator, on every consumer, and verify on the consumers rather than assuming inheritance. 29.97 against 30 drifts about one frame every 33 seconds — invisible at the top of the show and unmistakable by the end. Details in the GrandMA3 timecode guide.

A rehearsed failure path. Pull the cable in rehearsal. Decide whether the show freezes or freewheels, make sure the operator can see which is happening, and make sure they have practised the recovery once before it matters.

Further Reading

• How to Send Timecode to GrandMA3 — transports, frame rates, and failure behaviour
• Audio-Reactive Cues Over OSC — what to do when there is no clock to chase at all
• CueSync for Theatre Operators — cue stacks, Show Editor, Run Mode