Quicktime timecode change?

Is there a way to get quicktime to show normal video timecode instead of the present one hundredth of a second code (current time) in movie info?

Believe the "info" display is normally hh:mm:ss.ff where "hh" are hours, "mm" are minutes, "ss" are seconds, and "ff" are individual frames. You can, of course, within limits change your frame rate to something more to your liking. E.g., 25 fps would equate to about 0.04 seconds per frame. Not sure what you consider a "normal" timecode or "current time" here.

If you own QuickTime Pro you can review an individual frame (Movie Info window) by enabling the "Play all Frames" feature. This will mute the sound.
Use it, and the opened "Movie Info" window, and then the right/left arrow keys to "step through" the playback.
A simple "tap" on the arrow key will show the next frame and the time code for that frame.

You can also use the free collection of AppleScripts found at this link:
http://www.apple.com/applescript/quicktime/
One of them shows (Info/Timecode for front movie) shows a bit more detail based on the cursor position in the time line (Controller).

Thus, for normal video the number would only go up to 29, then back to 0 as the seconds area is increased by one.

You mean like this?

For movies that have other frame rates, I'd like to see those reflected in the timecode as well.

And this?

I would like this in Quicktime so that I can reference video frames in the standard SMPTE manner when critiquing student videos.

Hopefully, if this works correctly and you are a Mac Safari user, the above QT media link file examples will open in your QT Player and display what I assume you want if your default preferences allow. If you are using other browsers, you may have to "OK" automatic opening of the files in QT or locate the media link files themselves and manually open them. In any case, the "Show Movie Info" display will show a timecode as "hh:mm:ss:ff/fps" as I indicated above. In this case the first file is 30 fps and the second is 15 fps. QT Player normally updates timecode at 0.5 second intervals so you have to stop the player to increment/decrement individual frames using the right/left arrow keys to see all timecodes/frames. (Note: Press the escape key to revert to standard QT controller from "full" screen mode in first example.)

Jon:

I take it you did that by changing the timebase of the video track?

I know that the default timebase for a QuickTime movie is 1/100 second, and that you can freely change it programmatically, though I haven't seen a script or app that does it easily...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Nope, the time code in your examples are showing hours:minutes:seconds. They are not showing frame numbers.

Very strange. When played on my computer in QT 7.0.4, I get the individual frames beween 0 and 29. Not sure if you're capturing my example and thereby modifying how the timecode is displayed or not. Therefore, I have captured this window and made the file available so you can see what I actually see. CLICK HERE

A frame number would be shown after a semicolon.

Some of the applications i have use a periond and comma to distinguish decimal fractionals from frame references while others use the period without distinction.

I take it you did that by changing the timebase of the video track?

Nothing that advanced or dramatic. Simply used MPEG Streamclip to modify the timecode. Seems that Streamclip defaults to "frame" timecodes where possible. E.g., when playing my QT files I noticed that the Stremclip player generally preferred frame timecode references. Later noticed that movies using frame rates like 23.98 or 29.97 displayed as decimal time fractions (normal QT timecode) in QT but frame rates like 30, 15, etc. were displayed as "frame rate fractionals" in the QT Player when run through Streamclip.

How did you get it to do that?

Simply playing a file in MPEG Streamclip will display a frame based time code (i.e., ff separated from seconds by comma). However, if you want the timecode embedded in the clip you have to manually changed the frame rate to a "whole number" denominator in Streamclip and save it. Thereafter, the new file will play in the QT Player using the "slant-bar, frame rate denominator" display (until or unless the file is again exported/saved in QT Pro).