InqScribe and LTC

A question we get a lot goes like this:

I have a WAV (or MP3) file with time code in one channel and audio in the other. Can InqScribe detect the time code?

Unfortunately, no.

When an audio file has “time code in one channel” it usually means the time code was encoded as linear time code or LTC. LTC is an analog signal and has to be converted to some other digital format before InqScribe (or QuickTime, or any other piece of software) can understand it.

The analog to digital conversion process is surprisingly hard to do, which probably explains why there's a very short list of applications that can do it. We'd love to support it if we can. In the meantime, we'll list the few applications we've found in case you find them useful. (Note that we have not tried all of these applications.)

• Final Cut Pro users may find FCP auxTC reader helpful.
• TCode may be an option for some users; it's unclear whether TCode can detect LTC in media files, or just from live feeds.
• Traditionally media folks use hardware to read LTC; some devices have interfaces to allow computers to access the current time code. (Note that InqScribe doesn't talk to such devices.)

We'd love to see a conversion utility that can take a LTC channel and convert it to a QuickTime time code track. Or an application that can listen in during playback and decode LTC on the fly. If we find such a solution, we'll post it here.