Observing time in SMPTE

Valiumdupeuple

Hi!
I feel stupid but it's late :-)
I'm want something like a "Big Counter" as we can found in many DAW, in Live. I want to monitor the time in SMPTE.
With MFL, we can observe the current_song_time in Bar/Beat/Tick but not in time (I now there's something like a "get_current_smpte"... but it's a "get"... and my mouse clicking is not fast enough to update it at a inhuman frame rate :-).
So, I divide the "bar beat tick" by 200. But, as I reach a minute, off course I'm having 0.6 instead of 1. So what's the good math behind this?
Actually I need the math to calculate it to common SMPTE frames, at least 24, 25 and 30 ifps.
Thanks.
Jul

broc

Max Patch

Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

I would simply poll the function 'get_current_smpte...' with metro.
(note that observers do basically the same internally)

Valiumdupeuple

Thanks dear Broc.
Have you noticed that Live timing is quite strange? The first image is not 40ms long as it should be in 25/ifps, but 20ms. Moreover the smpte is not exactly time aligned to the ifps time indocators. (I hope you understand my english).

broc

Yes, the timing of Live API seems a bit "sloppy" by design (with variations up to 50ms).

Max Patch

Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

For perfect sync with Live you need using [transport] or [plugsync].
Here is a patch that calculates SMPTE from the beats (and tempo) output of plugsync.

Valiumdupeuple

Thanks again Broc, you rock!