Burst Electronics TC-3 - Manual (Page 7)

6 TC-3 SMPTE TIME CODE Generator/Reader
Presetting Time Code
To preset the generator for a certain time, first be sure the generator
is stopped (Press RUN/STOP so that the RUN/STOP LED is on).
Then press the SEL button, the first two digits of the window dis-
play will flicker. (The flicker indicates which set of digits is about
to be set.) Next press the SET button until the number you want for
hours is displayed. Press SEL again and repeat the process for min-
utes, seconds, and frames, until the time code you want to preset is
displayed.
After setting frames, pressing SEL once more will make the colon
between seconds and frames flicker. Pressing SET will now cause
the colon to change from a colon to a semicolon and back. This is
the setting for drop frame and non-drop frame operation.
A semicolon (;) indicates drop frame operation, a colon (:) indi-
cates non-drop frame operation. Because NTSC doesn’t have quite
30 frames of video per second (the exact number is 29.97) a cumu-
lative error in the SMPTE time code is present. To correct for this
error the TC-3 operates in a “drop frame” mode, dropping (not count-
ing) 1 frame of video at regular intervals.
Setting the User Bits
To set user bits, press TIME/UBITS so that the TIME/UBITS LED
is on. Now each digit of the user bits may be set using the SEL and
SET buttons in a similar manner as in setting the time code.
NOTE: Pressing the SEL and SET buttons at the same time will
reset the display (either time code or user bits) to all zeros.
Setting Window Display Size and Position
Vertical window size may be set by pressing the WINDOW SIZE
button. This button will also set the window to a transparent mode.