If you’re the organized type, dressing such a list in Excel can be a pain. For each timecode value entered, you have to type three separate colons so as to obtain, e.g. 10:00:00:00 (asking for a clip that starts at 10000000 will usually get you nowhere). Moreover, if you want to do a few basic calculations (e.g. finding the total duration of all footage coming from a particular agency), you have to go through them with a separate timecode calculator and then waste half a day copying and pasting. I’ve tried to create a formula which would handle all of that but I got lost, quickly, in Excel’s cryptic syntax. And I didn’t feel like learning how to program Excel.

Luckily, as often happens on the third paragraph, an easy and effortless solution exists. A Swiss company, Belle Nuit Montage, has posted on its website an invaluable little macro which goes by the positively baroque name of TC.XLA 1.1. (with Drop-Frame). This little marvel was written more than a decade ago by Matthias Bürcher and will take all timecode formatting and calculating tasks in Excel off your hands. There are versions for Macintosh Excel 4 & 5 – and even DOS! – however the version called “Macintosh Excel 5, downloadable for OSX” is working perfectly well in a more up-to-date environment (in my case, Excel 2004 running on OSX Leopard).

Unfortunately, the English version of the webpage comes with very few instructions (the French version is much more explicit). The idea is very simple: you have to launch the XLA file (either by opening it or by adding it to your default macros). This adds two new styles (which can be found using Format > Styles…), called Time Code and Time Code DF (for Drop-Frame). All you have to do once you’ve applied these styles to your cells is to type the timecode without the colons – much like you would do in Final Cut Pro or Avid – i.e. typing 10000000 will result in 10:00:00:00 being displayed. This isn’t half the story, though.

TC.XLA running in Excel 2004

TC.XLA adds a dozen of new and handy functions that are very simple to use. You can now easily add and subtract timecodes, convert between frame rates and even find the value of a timecode in feet for 16mm or 35mm film. The macro seems to support all standard drop and non-drop frame rates, although I’ve only worked with it in 25fps (which is the rate the code defaults to if you don’t specify another one).

The syntax for the functions is very simple and is described on the Belle Nuit Montage website. As an example, entering “TCminus(E4;D4)” into a cell will give you the timecode difference between the values in E4 and D4. Presuming the two cells represent IN and OUT points, the result is obviously the duration of the shot. You can then easily add up a list of those durations with TCsum. This last function doesn’t seem to refresh properly when changing values upstream, but forcing a recalculation (Command-=) solves the problem. This is a minor niggle, though, compared to the ease of use and practical value of this tiny piece of free software.

Update: The above works fine for Excel 2008 as well, however you must press Command-Option-T after creating your workbook in order to enable the macro. The status line should respond with “TC-XLA 1.1″ followed by a URL to confirm this.

Update II (May 21st, 2010): To all current and future commenters, please understand that I cannot offer support for this plugin because I haven’t programmed it. It is apparently a hit and miss affair, some people having lots of luck with it and others getting quite frustrated with the whole thing. I myself can’t understand why the macro behaves the way it does. I’ve emailed the author, suggesting to upgrade the plugin, but apparently it cannot be upgraded and “somebody would need to write it from scratch using VBA”. There is, honestly, nothing more I can do about it.