CatDV - capture, analyse, retrieve digital media

Sales and Support FAQ

Question

Some of my movies don't display timecode correctly. The frames count up to .96 rather than :29 before going back to 0.

Answer

It sounds like the clip has the wrong timecode format. When you import a movie CatDV uses various techniques to determine the timecode:

For DV movies (raw DV streams, or wrapped in a QuickTime or AVI wrapper) it uses the format encoded in the DV frame (PAL or NTSC, drop or non-drop)
For QuickTime movies with a timecode track it uses the format encoded in the timecode track
For other files CatDV makes a "best guess". If it's close to 29.97 fps it assumes drop frame NTSC, if it's within a percent or so of 24.0, 30.0 or 25.0 fps it treats it accordingly. For any other unrecognised frame rate it displays timecode as decimal fractions of a second, as is happening in your case.

Several preferences options affect this behaviour:

If you uncheck the "Strictly base clips on captured DV media" option CatDV will use the QuickTime timecode track in preference to the DV timecode. You can also check "Ignore DV timecode" to ignore the DV data altogether, though this is not recommended in most cases.

Finally, with CatDV 4.1.1 a new "Timecode format" option was added to control whether the guessed format is based on the average or nominal frame rate (the nominal frame rate is determined by the duration of a typical frame, ignoring any dropped frames which might distort the average).

16/1/06