USE CASE: This article assumes you already have a pre-timed and exported video that is the same length as the song in question. If you’d like me to write an article on how to make lyric videos, DM me!

1. Initial Questions

In order to properly set up timecode, you first have to obtain a couple pieces of key information.

1. Do you have an open output on the audio interface you use for running Ableton currently?
2. What sample rate is the Ableton Session running at?
3. What frame rate is the video I’m trying to sync with Timecode?

1.A - Determining interface outputs

1.B - How to find your Ableton Session’s Sample Rate

1. Open your preferred version of Ableton. For me, I’ll be demoing this with Live 11.
2. Open the session you will be syncing to, ideally with you audio interface connected.
3. Go to Ableton’s Preference page. On Mac, you can get here by clicking “Live” in the top left corner of your screen by the apple logo, and then hitting “Preferences” on the drop down menu.
4. From there, you should see something similar this screenshot. If not, make sure you click the “Audio” tab on the left side of this window.

5. In the middle of the page, you should see a section titled “Sample Rate”. Look at the value in the dropdown next to the “In/Out Sample Rate” label. For me, this session sample rate is 44100.
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Note: Sample rates are measured in Hertz (hz), so this is technically written as 44100hz. From there, we can simplify that even more by converting Hertz (hz) to Kilohertz (khz) by dividing that number by 1000 to get 44.1khz.
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Common Sample rates include 44.1khz, 48khz, 96khz, 192khz
6. Record this sample rate in your notes for later.

1.C - What frame rate is my video?

For this instance, since we’re trying to timecode a video with Resolume, we’ll get one step ahead by loading the video file into Resolume Alley.

If you don’t know what Alley is, It’s a video conversion tool that comes with Resolume. In the quickest summary, it intakes most video formats, and then is usually used to convert them to Resolume’s preferred DXV3 Codec with a .mov extension. For now, however, we will be using alley just for a moment in order to check the frame rate.

1. Open up Resolume alley
2. Drag and Drop your video onto Alley’s main window.
3. You should now see the video playing on the right side of the screen, with the video name and info on the left column.

4. If you look closely at the video info, you’ll see the third line of information is the Resolution, and Frame Rate. For this demo clip, the resolution is 3840 x 2160, and the frame rate is 29.97 FPS.
5. Take note of the frame rate for later.

2. Generate an LTC file

Now that we have all of that information, we can generate our LTC (Linear Timecode) file. Linear Timecode is just timecode in audio form. It’s a sound file like any stem or backing track, and goes into Ableton like any normal sound file would.

1. Head on over to https://elteesee.pehrhovey.net/

2. Match your Frame Rate and Sample Rate settings to the notes that you took earlier. (NOT TO THE SETTINGS IN THIS IMAGE!) If your video was 30 fps, select 30. If your sample rate was 48000, select 48000. Etc.
3. Set your bit depth to 24
4. Set the duration in minutes of the file you want to generate. The default is 10 minutes, which i usually just keep at 10 in case I want to re-use the timecode file later with a different, longer song.
5. Set the start time - there are 24 hours in timecode. you can separate your timecode stripes however you like, i.e. exporting every 10 minutes, but I usually just like to go by the hour marker. So for now, i’ll set mine to 1hr, which is 01:00:00:00. If I have multiple songs in a session, I’ll generate a new file starting at the next hour, i.e. 02:00:00:00, and so on.
6. Hit “GENERATE LTC”
7. From there, it will load for a little bit, and then you should see something like this:

8. Hit the link that says “Download Wav File”
9. It should download a zip file named with the matching the specs you entered earlier.

10. Unzip the file to reveal a .wav file with the same name.

11. Take note of where this file is stored for the next step!

3. Load the LTC file into Ableton

1. Create a blank Audio track, and assign its output to the free output we specified back in section 1A.
2. Drag and drop the downloaded timecode file onto the blank track
3. Make sure warp is off, and make sure the start and end of the clip is not fading in/out
4. Drag the start of the clip to the start of the song, or however many measures before the song the matching video actually starts.
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Tip! if you need to add room at the start of a session, hit the “CMD” + “I” keys to open a pop up to insert however many measures you want!

4. Resolume Setup

4.A - Wiring

1. For my setup, I’ll be going out of channel 2 of a Play Audio 12. My interface has ¼” outputs, so ill be taking a ¼” to XLR cable over into input 1 on the Focusrite audio interface on my Resolume machine.
2. Before you plug the input in, Make sure that Phantom Power (48v) is OFF, that your input is set to “Line” and not “Mic”, and that your input gain and output gains are all the way down.

INSERT DIAGRAM HERE

4.B - Resolume Audio Preferences

1. Go to Resolume’s Preference page. On Mac, you can get here by clicking “Arena” in the top left corner of your screen by the apple logo, and then hitting “Preferences” on the drop down menu.
2. From there, you should see something similar this screenshot. If not, make sure you click the “Audio” tab on the left side of this window.

3. Set your Audio Output Device first, even if you wont be outputting any audio from Resolume. For me, I’ll be using a Scarlett 2i4 audio interface.
4. Set the Audio Input Device to be the same thing.
5. You can ignore the Master Output Channels, Master Output Delay, and Preview Output Channels for now, unless you’re output audio for other video clips that are played back from Resolume.
6. Make sure your Buffer Size is 512
7. Change your Sample Rate to match the sample rate of your Ableton Session/Timecode Clip we generated earlier
8. Change the audio FFT Input Gain to 0 (middle of the slider)
9. Change External Audio FFT Input to No Input (unless you use audio input for audio reactive effects)
10. Change SMPTE Timecode Frame Rate to the corresponding frame rate of the Timecode Clip
11. Change the SMPTE Timecode Input 1 to Input 1 (or whatever input you plugged the dedicated timecode line into)
12. Change the SMPTE Timecode Input 2 to No Input (unless you’re getting super advanced and running timecode from two different sources.)
13. Close out of the preferences window

4C. Setting the Clip to respond to timecode

1. First off, make sure your clip is transcoded to DXV3 Format using Resolume Alley. If you would like assistance on how to do this, please visit this article here! INSERT LINK HERE
2. Remove any audio from the clip by clicking the “x” on the purple-y pink-ish tab of the clip inspector
3. Expand the Transport section of the clip inspector, and change the dropdown on the right to SMPTE 1.
4. Change the offset to match the timecode start time we specified when generating the LTC file

5. Test it!

Make sure the clip is active in Resolume and that its layer is visible, and then hit play in Ableton and watch the magic happen!