Another sync question. “I’m getting ready to take some jobs doing music for video in my studio. People tell me I need to get a Black Burst generator. Why?”
Oh man! I am not going to be able get in to all of the subtleties of various permutations of syncing audio equipment to video equipment here, but the quick answer is that you may not even need a Black Burst generator. If you are confident that the video tapes you will be scoring to have time code on them that is resolved to what the video house uses and/or the pieces are short (under one minute) then you can probably get by with a regular SMPTE reader. In fact, this can sometimes be the preferred method. However, for foolproof (relative term) operation you should have some means of syncing your equipment to a common time base. This is what the big production houses do. By having all of their gear always synced to a common source (House Sync) they are assured of never having problems with things drifting out of time with each other. The timing of everything is referenced to one source. If they start in sync, they’ll stay in sync.
If you get a video and stripe your own time code (known as wild time code) on it you can be assured that it isn’t in any way related to what is going on in the video production studio. When you take your finished audio tape in to be laid back into the video it will drift out of sync over time. How much time it takes for this to become noticeable varies (it can take 20 minutes or more), but it will drift. This is a very difficult problem to fix and often leads to starting the project over (which no one likes). If, however, your equipment is synced to a known solid time base that is the same frame rate the studio uses you should be able to get everything to resolve just fine at the end. In truth, the exact frame rate of your generator will be slightly different than the one in the studio, but these small differences are not an issue. The important thing is to be close, and stay exactly the same over time. This is what a Black Burst generator will enable you to do.