In the previous method, we've seen that most films were still shot without the use of time-code. There are several advantages to using time-code on a shooting, really speeding-up post-production, as we are about to see now...

The big change in regard to the two previous methods lies in the shooting

Of course, you've read (!?!?!?) the section concerning what happens on a shooting, which will then make the following sound quite familiar :

Even though there are several possible variations, the main purpose of a shoot with time-code is to associate picture and sound with the same adresses from the start, to avoid waisting time resyncing later-on. Either an external generator (surch as Aaton's OriginC+, for example), either the audio recorder, can be the source of these adresses. For sound, the time-code is generally recorded in LTC form on a dedicated track of the audio recorder. For picture, there are several systems that manage to represent the adresses as a bar-code or dot matrix on the film :

To the right, the Arriflex bar-code.

To the left, the Aatoncode, with HH:MM:SS man-readable adress.

Even though, in theory, a clapperboard isn't neaded when shooting with time code, since both picture and sound media record the same adresses, most (if not all) film crews prefer the redundancy brought by a "man readable" time code also printed on film, by the means of a time-code clapperboard. I'm sure you've seen these several times already on TV : they're those clapperboards with the huge bright red display showing the 8 digits of the TC.
Some TC clapperboards have their own built-in generator, which the clapper/loader will frequently update by feeding it the output of the main TC generator of the shooting (see above), and then hoping the clapper's generator won't drift too much from that main generator.
Some TC clapperboards only feature the TC display (no built-in generator), and need to be permanently connected to the main TC generator. This can be done via a cable (which will inevitably tangle-up somewhere) or via a wireless transmission : a transmitter sends the main generator's TC, and a receiver is mounted on the clapperboard, plugged into its TC input. At least with this type of clapperboard, you don't have to worry about a possible drift between generators, since there is just one !

Now you've probably noticed, from all these "behind the scenes of a shooting" documentaries they show now, that the digits on the display come to a sudden stop when the clapper/loader performs his "mark". There is a good but awkward reason for that : remember that a film camera is nothing but a camera (!!! duh !!!) taking 24 pictures per second. Imagine if each time one of the pictures was taken, the clapperboard decided, just for fun, that now is the time to increment the digits (in reality, there's a 50/50 chance of that happening !!!). You'd film just the adress changes, not the adresses themselves. The adresses, or at least the frames digits, would all be blury. So the clapperboard freezes its digits when the clapper/loader presses the "mark" button, just so that at least one adress can be printed correctly on film.

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On the shooting, one (or several) video tape recorder(s) record picture and sound as well as time-code on video tape, on which the editor can immediatly start working. For the wise people reading this, and for the even wiser that just read the pages on the two previous methods : it's just as if, straight off the shooting, we were already at a stage where a video transfer has been performed, and the syncing of sound to that video had been done.

The editor can immediatly start to work on that video copy of the picture, with sound at the same time-code adresses.
So what happens next ?

Picture process	.	Sound process
The editor may now start the artistic part of his craft, either with a video editing system or a virtual digital editing system (once these tapes have been digitized), assembling the pictures and sounds in a particular order. Even though he is not manipulating the full quality pictures and sound (the original negative is still at the lab / the original sound is still in the sound editing room, on hard disk or autoconform medium) , the true purpose (!!!???) of his work is something else : when editing, he is putting together an EDL.		.
Once the editor has finished his work on a scene (or even on the entire film), he sends the EDL to the lab, who then conforms the negative : they analyse the TC adresses that determine the editing in the EDL, and cut the negative accordingly. note : if there has been a failure in the "electronic" imprint of the TC on film, the "man-readable" adress can be read from the clapperboard, to resync that shot. The negative is now identical to the work of the editor. There are just a few processing stages left, meant to "equalize" the different shots of each scene seamlessly, by subtly altering the colors, the brightness, the contrast, etc...
the picture of the film is ready at last !		The sound editor gets a copy of the EDL on diskette and loads it into his DtD. The program now "knows" where each bit of sound used by the picture editor is. But for the moment, the disk drive of the DtD contains no sound relative to these scenes ! He now has to "record" the audio corresponding to the elements present in the EDL. To do so, the time-coded audio medium of the shooting is loaded into the appropriate player. The digital audio output of the player is connected to the digital audio input of the DtD. The time code output of the player must also feed the TC input of the DtD, which will therefore lock to it almost immediatly. A professional audio editing system can conform sound with a simple click of the mouse : the system locks to the incoming time code, in playback mode,waiting for an "interesting" sound regarding the EDL to pass by to go into record mode, therefore only copying the sounds included in the EDL on the hard disk. You can specify that the system collect extra sound before and after the EDL adresses, to later re-work the cross-fades. The sound takes that are not included in the EDL can also be loaded on the hard disk, but you'll have to do it manually, like any regular DtD recording. There is a "deluxe" alternative to this process, if the DtD is capable of controlling the player via 9-pin Machine Control protocol. In this case, rather than waiting for EDL related sounds to pass by to record them, the DtD spots the first element he needs from the EDL (first by its TC position, not first regarding the position of the sound within the scene), and tells the player to locate a few seconds prior to it with 9-pin commands. The player is then launched in playback (again, via 9-pin), the DtD locks to it, and drops in record mode at the appropriate moment. Once the sound is recorded, the DtD moves on to the next sound, following the same procedure.
		Once the audio conformation is finished, the editor can work on the other sounds that make-up a motion picture soundtrack (re-recorded dialog, foley, sound effects, ambiances, music). These sounds will then have to be mixed.
		Mixing can be done in two ways... Either by "transporting the session" on a removeable medium (removeable hard disk or backup performed on an MO disk) to a mixing stage equipped with the same DtD system. They'll at least have a hardware user interface, where you can move several faders at once ! An alternative would be to connect the audio outputs of the DtD to a separate dedicated mixer. Or "transfer" the edited sounds track per track to a digital multi-channel medium : 48 track DASH 48, several 8 track DA-88 tapes, several 8 track Genex 8000 MO disks, etc... These media then pass through a dedicated mixer. For now, this is the simplest solution, since it eliminates any incompatibility problems between editing and mixing software. All the professionnal mixing stages are equipped to read 48 track DASH and 8 track DA 88, and are moving onto MO systems like the Genex pretty darn quick.

Again, the wise guys sitting in the front row have noticed that the only things left to do concern the release of the film, and we've already got that covered in the pages describing the Traditional Method.