How to convert a MTC number to a song postion pointer

[ManuelRodrigues]

Hi There,

I need to be able to calculate which Ableton song position pointer value (bars, beats and subdivisions) corresponds with a certain MTC number. Of course this depends on the bpm and the time signature of the audio and the fps of the mtc. Complicated. Does anybody know of a handy (online) calulator which does this trick?

Cheers,

Manuel

[doghouse]

I've never seen one. What good is making this calculation anyway?

[ManuelRodrigues]

Well, I need to be able to start clips in Ableton at certain moments in (midi) time (code)

I'm receiving 3 different midi time code segments.

segment 1 starts from 00:00:00:00
segment 2 starts from 00:10:00:00
segment 3 starts from 00:20:00:00

When I receive the timecode section which starts at 00:10:00:00 Ableton transport jumps to somewhere in the the 300's. I need to know which spp starting number offset I need to give my clips to make sure that it starts in sync with the mtc.

Hope this clarifies my question.

[broc]

I would convert the mtc number to milliseconds and then use the Max object [translate ms bbu].
'bbu' means 'bars beats units' where units is given in ticks (1 beat = 480 ticks).

[ManuelRodrigues]

I'm ashamed to confess but after researching this a little more I discovered the math is actually extremely easy.

An example: When the midi timecode starts at 00:01:00:00 (one minute) and Ableton runs at 128 beats per minute, the song position pointer wil be at 32.1.1. Because 128 notes diveded by 4 is 32 bars.