Time Codes - Text 4
The late 1970s were still a time of research and experimentation, when some manufacturers of cameras, editing benches and tape recorders were testing time coding systems proposed by the EBU and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. In 1978, at the request of the Société française de production (SFP), Aaton adapted one of its cameras (the Aaton 7) to the EBU code and installed its clear marking process in it.[10] In collaboration with Stefan Kudelski, who also installed a code generator in the Nagra IV, Aaton modified the camera’s film channel and designed four master clocks.
Championing the “Clear Marking” System against the Time Code System
Soon after the Film 77 fair in London, Jean-Pierre Beauviala published an article in the magazines Sonovision and American Cinematographer introducing his “clear marking” system (the name of which at the time was “Aaton Numerals”) as a notable improvement over the EBU coding system.[11]
The EBU system, which required one second to stabilize and inscribe the time code, made it difficult to record the time on brief shots. It was also costly and poorly suited to film editing,[12] because decoding, which required machine reading, obliged the editor to work blind. Aaton thus stood out by offering a system which could be read directly on the film by the human eye, facilitating the editor’s work, and by manufacturing a machine, called Adage, for reading and imprinting the code. Clear marking, in being adapted to the inherent transparency of photochemical film stock, which unlike videotape has to be cut and assembled by hand, reasserted both the specificity of the film medium and the role of human intervention in the technical chain.