Getting help > Time Code Trouble

Most time code related errors, are due to inaccurate codecs installed on your computer. This is NOT really an INTERACT issue, but INTERACT does need a high quality codec in order to work properly.

Inaccurate codecs do play your video as well as high quality codecs, but the big difference lays is the time information provided by the codec, which is passed through by the Windows Media Player to INTERACT.

▪Read the section Codecs and Playback Software for further details.

Wrong time code

If the ongoing time value in the Observation Ribbon shows the last two digits as Seconds instead of Frames, or is not shown at all, you do face a Codec problem.

Even if the video seems to be running fine within the regular Windows media player, based on a standard Windows video codec, the detailed time code information is not interpreted correctly.

What codec setup is required for which video format and compression combination, is described in the section Codecs and Playback Software.

Jerky time code

If the time code seems to be correct as such, but runs very irregular, it could also be a video codec issue. Most often however it is a 'simple' performance issue:

•Access times on a DVD/CDROM are never constant.

•Videos run from a network drive are influenced by the local network load.

Is the video stored on your hard disk or a local external disk (that is not too full of course), the PC itself is often the bottleneck. Whether this is the case can be checked quite easily:

▪Open the Windows Taskmanager (Right-click in an empty spot of the Windows task bar)

▪Switch to the Performance tab.

▪Keep an eye on the CPU and Memory usage and while playing and controlling your video in INTERACT. If either of them rises next to 100%, you have found the source of your trouble.

If no other applications are running and no virus scanner or virtual machine is blocking your recourses, you do need a more powerful PC and/or more memory. In case of very large video files, cutting your videos into smaller pieces might help, if you are short on memory.

Also using another codec for compression can get you out of trouble, because the new high-compression codecs that offer amazing quality at rather small file sizes, might save disk space, but they sure need a lot more CPU power during decompression!