01:00:00:00
A timecode generator that plays the show.
It plays your audio and sends SMPTE timecode locked to where that audio has got to. Press Play, and the console follows.
Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit · one file, no installer · free
New in 1.1Place your cues on the song, and export them to grandMA2 or grandMA3.
See it run
Two short videos, from the download to the desk following the music.
Sequences, marks and BPM paste, then the export: one command pasted into grandMA2, and the desk runs the cues with the music · Watch on YouTube
Download it, load a song, set up the timecode in grandMA2, and press Play. The window looks different now, and the output settings are behind the cog · Watch on YouTube
Both play from YouTube, which loads only when you press Play.
What it does
It doesn’t follow the music. It counts it.
A lighting or video desk that runs from timecode needs something to tell it what time it is. Synphonos is that something, and it is also the thing playing the music — which is the point.
The timecode is not synchronised to the audio. It is counted from it, one sample at a time, in the same audio callback that fills the output buffer. There is nothing to line up, and nothing that can drift.
It generates timecode. It never reads or chases it.
WAV, AIFF, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC. Up to eight stems playing as one song.
Longitudinal timecode, on a channel of the same output device. Patch it into the desk’s timecode input.
Quarter-frame messages out of a MIDI port — to a console, or to another program on the same machine.
The window
Dark and quiet, because it lives next to a lighting desk in a blacked-out room. Gold means one thing only: lit and live. The playhead, the readout while it runs, the part of the song that has played.
The readout is the timecode going out, not the file’s position. Every stem is its own waveform, drawn as fine glowing grains, sharing one playhead and one view. Ctrl and scroll zooms in until a single frame is 24 points wide.
Settings sit behind a cog and the show’s files behind a folder, so the window holds only what the show needs. It opens at the size, in the place and in the mode you left it.
Six looks come with it, and the accent, ground and text can each be set to whatever your production wants.
Running a show
A show is the whole evening: songs in order, each with its own stems, start and marks. An hour each puts song 1 at 01:00:00:00 and song 2 at 02:00:00:00, so one song’s cues can never match another’s.
Tick a key and it keeps working while grandMA onPC has the keyboard, so the set runs from the console and nobody touches the timecode machine. Synphonos hands the keys back whenever its own window is in front.
Up to eight files play as one song — band, BVs, click. One transport, one position, one set of timecode. Each gets its own channels, so a click can go to the MD and nowhere else.
Runs the show without letting anything change it. Play, marks and levels keep working; stems, starts, the frame rate and the running order freeze. Stop asks twice — Escape is the key a hand reaches for by reflex.
The show file holds the set list, the marks and the cues; the device, the port and the keys stay with the machine. Copy the show folder over, open it, pick that machine’s device once.
verse 1, LX42 GO, last chorus — named points saved with the song, on Page Up and Page Down, or on a key of their own.
A stem whose file has moved stays in the show, listed as not found. Put the file back, press Look again, and it loads in its old place with its level.
The show, the song and the playhead; Show or Program; the window’s size and place. Every change is saved within a second, so there is no Save to forget.
Type 7h10m into any timecode field and it becomes 07:10:00:00. 90m and 30f work too.
New in 1.1 · Program mode
Put the cues on the song.
Program is a second mode of the same window. The readout, the stems and the transport stay; the lower half becomes sequences, a cue table and the tools to edit them.
A sequence stands for one on the console: the main cue list, a strobe button, the blinders. A mark in it is a moment the console does something: the next cue of a cue list, or the press and release of a button.
You place marks on the waveform, to the frame, with the music under them. Timecode goes out the same way in both modes, so what you programmed is what runs.
Up to 32 in a show, each with a name, a colour and a function: Goto, Go+, Temp, Flash, Swop, Toggle and the rest. Every song of the show uses the same ones.
A cue placed between 2 and 3 becomes 2.5; no number ever changes by itself. Type a number the sequence already has and that mark fires the same cue again, so the second verse goes back to the verse look.
Type a song’s BPM, tap it, or have it detected from a stem. Bar and beat lines run through the stems and the sequences, and marks can snap to them.
Copy one strobe hit and paste it every quarter beat for four bars. Each copy is placed from the start, never from the one before, so bar 64 is as exact as bar 1.
A fade, an out fade, delays, a mode and a command for each cue, and an Off time for each sequence. Fades are drawn as dashed lines over the song, so you can see where the light is gone.
Marks copy from one song to another and keep their spacing, and the window shows where a paste will land before you make it. Every edit can be taken back.
New in 1.1 · Export
Then hand them to the console.
Export… writes the loaded song as two files: a macro, and the timecode it imports. A switch at the top picks grandMA2 (3.9.60 or later) or grandMA3.
The files go straight into grandMA onPC on the same PC, onto a USB stick laid out for a console, or into a folder. Nothing reaches the console until you run the macro there, and the window gives you the commands to type, ready to copy.
The macro stores each new cue empty for you to fill, labels the cues and the sequences, puts each sequence on its executor with the right kind of button, and brings in the timecode that fires them. Change the song and export again: only the new cues are stored, and the looks you have programmed are left alone.
A cue’s command is written only when you tick it in the window, so a show from someone else cannot put commands on your console unread.
Tried on onPC, not yet on a real console. On grandMA3 the whole export was run on onPC 2.4.2 and 2.5.1: the import, every cue, every press and release, and on 2.4.2 with Synphonos’s own MTC arriving. On grandMA2 the import works on onPC 3.9.63; whether every event fires at its time, and cue times, have not been checked there yet.
The manual says what is untried, chapter by chapter and in one table. If you run it on a console, tell me how it goes: contact@synphonos.com.
Specifications
Everything it is, in one table.
| Timecode out | LTC, −20 to 0 dBFS (default −10), and MTC quarter-frames with a −8 to +8 frame trim. Either or both, switchable while playing. |
|---|---|
| Frame rates | 24, 25, 29.97 NDF, 29.97 DF, 30 |
| Audio formats | WAV, AIFF, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC (.m4a, .mp4, .aac), MKV/WebM audio |
| Audio out | WASAPI shared mode, at the device’s own sample rate |
| Limits | 8 stems per song, 200 songs and 32 sequences per show |
| Speed | 10% to 200%, like a tape — timecode keeps to the track |
| Tempo | 20 to 400 BPM: typed, tapped, or detected from a stem |
| Console export | grandMA2 3.9.60 or later, and grandMA3 (tried on onPC 2.4.2 and 2.5.1). One song at a time, as a macro and a timecode file. Not at 29.97 DF, which neither console’s timecode has. |
| On your machine | Settings and shows in %APPDATA%\tcgen\config, unless you move them. Nothing installed, no registry keys, no runtime. |
| Network | None. It makes no connections at all. |
What it is not
Better to read this now than to find out at the production meeting.
The download
Three files. Unzip them into a folder of their own and double-click.
SmartScreen. The program is not code-signed yet, so Windows may warn you the first time you run it. More info → Run anyway. To be sure the zip is the one published here, check it first:
1c34b92d83eebc9b6bc55659f6d6d865efaf5f9758007b942904d2e894bc28ca
In a Command Prompt, in the folder you downloaded it to, this should print the same line:
certutil -hashfile Synphonos-1.1.0-windows-x64.zip SHA256
Coming from 1.0? 1.1 opens your shows as they are, and saves them in a new format that 1.0 cannot read. Update every machine, the backup rig included, before you share a show, and keep a copy of the 1.0 file for any machine still on 1.0.
You are asked to accept the terms once more. They are as they were; the privacy notice now lists every file 1.1 writes.
You will also need an audio output with a spare channel for LTC — or a MIDI port for MTC — and a desk that reads timecode, set to the same frame rate. For MTC to another program on the same machine, Windows needs a virtual MIDI driver such as loopMIDI; the program walks you through it.