Sync signal between camera, recorder, and lighting boards via MIDI protocol — locks picture and sound frame-accurate. Essential for multicam and VFX.
You're shooting with three cameras simultaneously and the lighting technician is controlling a fully automated LED wall in parallel — without MIDI Timecode, your project will fall apart. The signal sends the exact position in the film frame by frame as a data stream to all connected devices. Not only does each camera know its temporal position; the recorder, the lighting operator, and later the VFX supervisor all have the same truth. This is synchronization at a micro-level.
In practice: You set the master signal on the recorder or via an external timecode generator (often the audio interface) — usually 25 fps PAL or 24 fps for cinema. This then runs via MIDI cable or USB-MIDI adapter to all connected devices: cameras receive it via Timecode IN, LED controllers read it directly, sound recorders auto-lock for synchronization. This saves you months of editing puzzles on the cutting room floor in multi-camera scenes. Especially for live events with lighting automation or performance capture shoots (where actor tracking and camera sync are critical), MIDI TC becomes an indispensable infrastructure.
Common mistakes: Generator is running, but not all devices are set to the same frame rate and drop-frame standard — the drift over 8 hours of shooting time can be significant. MIDI latencies are negligible as long as the cables are good; USB-MIDI over long distances becomes susceptible. A backup generator (often a second interface or smartphone app) is not paranoia — if the master fails, your entire workflow loses its orientation.
In the VFX workflow, MIDI TC also serves as the bridge to motion capture systems and virtual cameras in real-time rendering engines (e.g., Unreal Engine with LED wall previs). The DIT notes the TC status in the report so that the VFX supervisor can later precisely align every camera frame with the CG model — without TC continuity, this becomes repair work.
Related concepts: Timecode generator, LTC (Linear Timecode) as an analog variant, SMPTE standard, DIT workflow, Multi-camera recorder.