SMPTE Timecode not seamless

[erc]

Hi Resolume team,

I have a strange problem with Arena and SMPTE. I looks like the video is skipping some frames and not playing smooth. We are almost certain it's not the signal itself because all other systems run fine (GrandMA and Reason).
I use a XLR from Reason to the Neutrik NA2F-D0B-TX and then to the jack input of my server. We also tried without the NA2F-D0B-TX but makes no difference.

The content files are all the same as the SMPTE frame rate so this isn't the problem either. Also tried modifying the buffer size, no luck either.

It's a 20min video that has to play in sync with the lights and audio. After 5 hours of playing Resolume Arena started delaying even more and at some point crashing. We had to restart the Arena software and then it was fine again.


Any suggestions?

best regards,
Eric

[Joris]

Sorry to hear you're having problems, Erc.

Is it actually the timecode which is not seamless, or does the clip playback itself cause the problem? You can check whether the timecode is received correctly in the toolbar in the center of the interface.

[Oaktown]

Erc, are you using drop or non-drop frame SMPTE timecode? Over 20 minutes, the difference between the two would be 36 frames so if your content is 29.97fps, you'll want to use 29.97 drop frame to get the best results.

[Joris]

SMPTE in Resolume is a frame lookup, so there is no incremental drift over a period of time. The only thing you will see when using the wrong framerate is that it skips the last frames of every second. On the first frame of the next second, things will be in sync again.

What I suspect is the case is that the SMPTE is fine, but some compressed video codec is used. This could result in lag and crashes over time.

[serch54]

Hi, bumping this old problem. I'm having the same issue and my show is Sunday night (Oct 22 2017). Im running DXV3 clips like I always do, on Arena 5.14 , on a system that's been very stable for a long time. Getting a smtpe signal through the headphone jack from a Protools server with the correct frame rate selected. The clip starts jumping up and back, then plays for a few seconds, but very choppy, then jumps around and back. I've never see it do this before, nor has the sound engineer. Also songs will work perfect one time, then not the next. Maybe its the auxillery cable?
Any other methods I can use to keep these songs synced?

[Zoltán]

I assume you checked the frame rates to be correct along the signal path and your video clip.
The 4 pin headphone jack will expect microphone level signals.
If you feed a line level signal to it, the signal will distort, this can result in unpredictable SMPTE decoding.
So the first thing to check would be that you get undistorted signal input, you can do this by opening a sound recorder app record a few seconds and have a look at the waveform, it should be a perfect square-like (PWM) signal, without spikes or similar things around the signal rises/peaks.