tools of the trade
Nov 28, 2017
Lead from Ted Simonides, GoPro Director of Developer Partnerships
Paul Scurrell and his team at Timecode Systems have worked closely with the GoPro Developer Program team to build on the innovation of their SyncBac PRO for HERO4 and release the SyncBac PRO for HERO6 Black shortly after GoPro's introduction of that camera. The new SyncBac PRO will allow production companies to take advantage of important new features of HERO6 Black such as advanced image stabilization, new video resolutions like 4K60 and 1080p240 for enhanced slow-motion playback.
Making It Easier to Deal with Reality
By Paul Scurrell, CEO of Timecode Systems Limited
Gold Rush, Big Brother, The Real Housewives, The Island with Bear Grylls; from survival shows to fly-on-the-wall hospital programs, forget celebrities, it's normal' people we want to see on our televisions nowadays. In fact, our obsession with people-watching is so ingrained in popular culture, that one of the most popular programmes broadcasting at the moment in the UK is Gogglebox, a show where we watch other people watching television.
The appeal of these shows is their ability to bring drama, comedy, or romance into peoples homes - and the audience is looking for complete authenticity. As the appetite for unscripted, reality television has grown, a more voyeuristic style of filming has become popular in the professional world of television production. There is little flexibility to stop, rewind and repeat the action, so making a great show depends on the ability to capture every enraged outburst, slip of the tongue, revolted glance and teary exchange. This has led to the rise of the POV shot, with GoPros mounted on everything, everyone and in every nook or cranny to ensure each angle is covered and nothing is missed.
This creates huge volumes of footage that then has to be heavily edited into the story the shows producers think will result in the best entertainment value for viewers. And here lays the challenge - searching, logging and editing the vast quantities of footage delivered to postproduction. In the professional world, timecode is used to ease this process. Timecode is an important form of production metadata. By assigning each frame recorded a specific timecode, editors are able to find a particular frame across multiple camera and audio sources by referencing this number. If each camera and audio device on a shoot is running timecode, this allows all sources to be synced and the data can then easily be dropped into the edit timeline and automatically aligned.
However, since GoPro cameras are built for the consumer first and foremost, the HERO line of cameras doesn't support timecode out of the box. If footage is not timecoded, the edit becomes a particularly laborious task. Days can be spent manually searching and lining up each shot to sync with each other and with any separately recorded audio.
Let's consider this in the context of Gold Rush. Gold Rush follows a cast of miners as they race through the Yukon territory in Canada and Colorado in the USA seeking gold. With four or five GoPro cameras mounted on each vehicle, and others scattered around the three main mining sites, around 2,000 memory cards' worth of content is generated from these GoPro cameras alone during one season of filming. This equates to approximately 5,000 hours of footage that needs to be searched, logged, and synchronized. Without timecode, this is a time-consuming task that can add several extra days to the postproduction process for each individual episode.
Content Floater
On location with SyncBac PRO mounted to HERO4 camera.
--
Close work with GoPro through the GoPro Developer Program has allowed us to develop SyncBac PRO. By enabling the GoPro camera to generate its own frame-accurate timecode, the SyncBac PRO creates the capability to timecode sync multiple GoPro cameras wirelessly over long-range RF. And if GoPros are being used as part of a wider professional multicamera shoot, such as in Gold Rush, SyncBac PRO also allows GoPro cameras to timecode sync with long-lens and other more traditional main cameras and audio devices using Timecode Systems products. At the end of a shoot, the edit team receives SD cards with frame-accurate timecode embedded into the MP4 file. The impact of this is huge. For example, since adopting SyncBac PRO when filming season eight of Gold Rush, the need to align content manually has been eliminated, delivering significant time and cost savings for the show.
From our conversations with edit teams from the reality genre of program-making, time savings of around 85 percent are being achieved in postproduction as a result of using SyncBac PRO on GoPro cameras. But its not just editors who appreciate the benefits that synchronization offers. The creative freedom SyncBac PRO allows on set means everyone from the camera operators to the artists in front of the camera feel the benefits.
Going back to Gold Rush as an example; before adopting the SyncBac PRO solution, the crew would visually timecode-slate GoPro cameras to create a sync marker for the edit team. This was a disruptive manual process, and when there was a lot going on, it was simply impossible to stop the action and ask the miners to wait while they got a clapperboard out to slate five GoPros. As a result, the most exciting content was often non-timecoded and therefore the hardest to find and synchronize. Using SyncBac PRO has had a massive impact on the whole production team of Gold Rush, from the minicam operators setting up the GoPros, to the assistant producers scouring through the footage logging shots for key storylines, to the DITs pre-synchronizing content ahead of sending on to postproduction to edit. With sync taken care of, they all have more time to devote to developing the content and usin
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
26/11/2025
Vizrt, the leader in live production technology revolutionizing viewer engagement and experience, releases AI-driven advances focusing on speed, intelligence, a...
26/11/2025
ITN Productions, an award-winning factual content producer, today launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins. Responsible for delivering a leading...
26/11/2025
Ikegami reports ongoing advances throughout 2025 in developing and delivering coordinated television production solutions that maximize quality, versatility and...
26/11/2025
Following the Nov. 21 blackout of NBCUniversal channels on Fubo, the two sides have traded barbs about their inability to reach a new carriage deal....
26/11/2025
LONDON As TV sports rights become increasingly important for both broadcasters and streamers, Ampere Analysis predicts global investment in the genre will surpa...
26/11/2025
LOS ANGELES Vubiquity said it has achieved the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Media & Entertainment Competency as part of the AWS Partner Network (APN). This designa...
26/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau said it has entered into a consent decree with Comcast calling for the cable company t...
26/11/2025
Berklee Named to the Hollywood Reporters Top Music Schools List The publication highlights the college's screen scoring program, industry partnerships, and ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
Animated Series Love Through a Prism' Casts New Light on ...
26/11/2025
Back to All News
NALIP Unveils Fifth Cohort of Director Incubator
Social Impact
26 November 2025
United States
Link copied to clipboard
The National Assoc...
26/11/2025
YouView Achieves Greenly Gold Certification for SustainabilityNov 26, 2025
YouView is proud to announce a Gold Certification award from Greenly for our perform...
tools of the trade 
