A client writes “around 1:32, the logo looks wrong”. The editor parks the playhead at 1:32 and finds three shots inside that second, two of them with a logo.
Which one? The note goes back as a question, and a fix that takes a minute waits a day for the answer.
Timecode exists so that doesn’t happen. Editors read it all day. Producers, account managers and clients mostly see it in the corner of the player and look past it, which is a shame, because learning to read it takes about five minutes.
In short
- Timecode is HH:MM:SS:FF, and the last field counts the frames inside the current second.
- A time with only minutes and seconds can point at two or three shots in a fast cut, so write the frame too.
- A review copy usually starts at 00:00:00:00, while many edit timelines start at 01:00:00:00.
- In a note, copy the time from the player, write all four fields, name the version and describe what’s on screen.
What the four numbers mean
Timecode is written HH:MM:SS:FF, which stands for hours, minutes, seconds and frames. 00:01:32:12 means zero hours, one minute, 32 seconds and frame 12.
The first three fields work like any clock. The fourth counts the frames that have gone by inside the current second.
This is SMPTE timecode, named after the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, which publishes the standard (ST 12). Cameras, editing software and review tools all use it, so a timecode you write down points the editor at the frame you saw.
Out loud, you can drop the leading zeros: “one thirty-two, frame twelve”. If the video runs past an hour, say the hour first.
The last field is a frame count
Video is a run of still images, usually 24, 25 or 30 of them per second, depending on how it was shot and where it will play.
The frames field counts from 00 up to one less than the frame rate. At 25 fps it goes from 00 to 24, then the seconds tick over and it starts again at 00.
So the 12 at the end is frame 12, which people often misread as 0.12 seconds. How much time it represents depends on the frame rate:
| Timecode | Frame rate | Seconds from the start | Frames from the start |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00:01:32:12 | 24 fps | 92.5 | 2,220 |
| 00:01:32:12 | 25 fps | 92.48 | 2,312 |
| 00:01:32:12 | 30 fps | 92.4 | 2,772 |
| 00:00:10:15 | 25 fps | 10.6 | 265 |
| 00:00:10:15 | 30 fps | 10.5 | 315 |
To get the frame count, multiply the seconds by the frame rate and add the frames.
What’s worth remembering is that the same timecode points at slightly different moments at different frame rates, and that a frames field at or above the frame rate is a typo. 00:01:32:27 exists at 30 fps and doesn’t at 25.
Some players show 1:32.48 instead, with a period before the last number. That’s a decimal fraction of a second, which is a different count from frames.
Why “around 1:32” isn’t enough
Plenty of players show only minutes and seconds. A display that reads 1:32 can be anywhere inside that second, and at 25 fps a second is 25 frames.
On an interview with long takes it doesn’t matter much, because the editor finds the shot at a glance. On a fast cut or a montage where shots last half a second, that one second can hold two or three shots, and “the logo at 1:32” could be in any of them.
Why it pays to pin a note to the exact frame is covered in our guide to frame-accurate comments. The point here is smaller. If you’re going to write a time by hand, write the frame too.
Where the clock starts
The timecode in your review player and the one on the editor’s timeline don’t always match. A review copy normally counts from 00:00:00:00, the first frame of the file.
Many editors start every sequence at 01:00:00:00, a broadcast habit that leaves room for bars, tone and a slate before the program, so 00:00:42:00 in your player is 01:00:42:00 on theirs.
An hour of difference is easy to spot. A review copy exported from an in point, or with a few seconds of black at the head, moves every note by a small amount that nobody notices.
How editors find and correct that offset is in our post on importing comments as markers in Premiere. On the reviewer’s side, it’s enough to say so when the time in a note didn’t come from the review player.
Semicolons and drop frame
Sometimes the last separator is a semicolon, as in 00:01:32;12, or every separator is, as in 00;01;32;12. That’s drop-frame timecode, used at 29.97 fps.
Video at 29.97 plays slightly slower than 30 frames a second, so a timecode that counted 30 per second would fall behind the wall clock. Drop frame skips the frame numbers 00 and 01 at the start of every minute except every tenth one, and stays in step.
No picture is dropped, only numbers. Copy the separators exactly as you see them and leave any conversion to the editor. The Premiere post has the full arithmetic.
How to write a timecode in a note
Five habits get the editor to the right frame on the first try:
- Copy the time from the player instead of typing it. Typing is how 01:32 turns into 01:23.
- Write all four fields, 00:01:32:12, or just minutes and seconds when the exact frame doesn’t matter. Three fields are ambiguous, because 01:32:12 can mean an hour, 32 minutes and 12 seconds, or one minute, 32 seconds and frame 12, depending on the player it came from.
- Name the version. After a recut, everything after the change moves, and a v2 timecode applied to v3 points at a different shot.
- Describe what’s on screen: “00:01:32:12, wide shot of the stage, logo top right”. If the time is off because of an offset or the wrong version, the description still finds the shot.
- For anything that lasts, give both ends: “00:01:32:12 to 00:01:35:00, the music is louder than the voiceover”.
Put together, a note reads like this: “v3, 00:01:32:12, wide shot of the stage. The logo in the top right corner is still the old one.”
There’s more on notes an editor can act on in our guide to giving video feedback.
How this works in RecReview
With time-coded comments in RecReview, you rarely have to type a timecode. Each comment is pinned to the moment where you started writing it, stored to the millisecond, and clicking the comment takes the player back to that exact point.
When you pause, the player matches its time to the frame on screen, so the note sits on the image you were looking at. Pressing C opens the comment box at the current frame, and the box shows the time it’s about to pin.
The player shows time in three formats, chosen from the small arrow next to the clock: Normal (minutes and seconds), SMPTE (HH:MM:SS:FF) and Frames (minutes, seconds and frames). The choice carries over to the comment list and the comment box, and your browser remembers it.
Frames are counted at the frame rate detected for the file, which shows up next to the duration and resolution when you hover over or click the video’s title at the top of the page.
The arrow keys step one frame back or forward, and Shift with an arrow jumps five seconds. Clicking the time in the player copies it, and clicking the time on a comment copies it and jumps there.
Times typed into a comment or a reply turn into links that move the player, in three shapes: 01:32, 1:01:32 and 00:01:32:12.
Only times that exist in the video become links, so a frames field at or above the frame rate, or a 01:00:42:00 pasted from an edit timeline into a three-minute video, stays plain text.
Three fields are read as hours, minutes and seconds unless the reader has picked the Frames format, which is one more reason to write all four, with colons, the way the player shows them.
For a note about a stretch of the video, press I and O to mark the in and out points, and the comment covers the whole range.
The player counts from 00:00:00:00, the first frame of the file, and that’s the clock every comment uses. The marker XML for Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, downloaded from the review page, starts at the same 00:00:00:00.
