doc.go

/*
Package vtc is inspired by years of scripting workflow solutions in a Hollywood cutting
room. It aims to capture all the ways in which timecode is used throughout the industry
so users can spend more time on their workflow logic, and less time handling the
corner-cases of parsing and calculating timecode.

To get an overview of what this package can do, see the example at the
bottom.

Timecode, A History

But first: what is timecode?

If you're already familiar with timecode, it's history, and it's flavors, feel free to
skip this section.

Back in the days of film, a running strip of numbers ran along the edge of the film
stock to uniquely identify each frame, called
keycode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keykode)

Keycode was essential to the film editing process. The raw negative of a film is
irreplaceable: you loose quality each time you make a copy. Editing film is necessarily
a destructive process (https://nofilmschool.com/2017/06/editing-on-a-flatbed), and
often required multiple iterations. It would be just a tad nerve-wracking to take a pair
of scissors and some glue to the one-of-a-kind film reels straight out of the camera
on set, then running it over and over through a flatbed.

To avoid potential disaster, editors made their cut of the film using copies of the
raw negative, called a work print (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workprint), allowing
the editor to work without fear of sinking a project from slicing, dicing, and wearing
at the film.

When the edit was complete, it was necessary to know *exactly* where the edits had been
made, so it could be recreated with the raw negative for finishing. A *cut list* would
be written out, with the exact reels and keycodes for every cut, and would be used to
make an exact duplicate of the editor's work print with the mint condition raw negative.

In video and digital filmmaking, the same approach is used. Massive RAW files from a
RED, ARRI, Sony, or other cinema camera are rendered down to more manageable files an
Editor's machine won't choke on. Once the edit is complete, the raw files are
re-assembled using a digital cutlist on a powerful machine for finishing out the film.

In film, we referenced *keycode* to know exactly what frame was being displayed on
screen at any given time. In digital video, we reference the *timecode* of a given
frame.

For a technical deep-dive into the many flavors of timecode, check out
Frame.io's excellent blogpost on the subject:
https://blog.frame.io/2017/07/17/timecode-and-frame-rates.

Organization

This package is broken into two subpackages:

• rate: framerate types and functions

• tc: timecode types and functions

See the subdirectories below.

Demo

See a brief overview of this package by expanding the example below:
*/
package vtc