under the hood · 01

How jam by camera works.

No cable, no sync box. The phone's camera looks at the camera's own timecode display, learns its digits, and locks the two clocks together. All of it happens on your device.

the honest bit

When a cable is still better

A cable into the audio input is still the most accurate way to jam. Reading a screen has to allow for the camera's display lag, so if the two clocks look a frame off, nudge a frame either way. Feed LTC down a cable and SmartLog locks to that instead.

• Camera readtypical lock within a few ms, display lag allowed for
• LTC by cableframe-perfect, via the audio input
• Manual trim-1 / +1 frame nudge, then jam to this
• Privacyreads the picture on this device, sends nothing anywhere

• Why video, not a photoone frame at 24 fps is 41 ms; a still cannot say which frame it caught. SmartLog reads the display as video and solves for the phase.
• Learning the digitsthe frames digit resets to zero the instant the seconds change, so the app learns all ten of that camera's own digits from one clean second
• The ratecounted from the rollovers themselves: 24, 25 and 30 fps displays, including the fractional rates they stand for, drop-frame punctuation included
• The lockevery frame brackets the offset; a few hundred frames collapse to a band a few milliseconds wide, and that band is the number on screen
• When unsureit refuses and says so. A capture that cannot see every digit change is thrown away rather than guessed at.
• Bench honestyproven against synthesised displays at every supported rate; camera-in-hand reports are welcome and credited