Timecode tools for Ableton Live · macOS
Live has no native LTC chase — so LiveTC decodes incoming SMPTE off any audio input and drives Live's transport to match, coasting between corrections so steady playback never re-seeks or glitches. Run it in reverse and it captures a full timecoded playback session — from any DAW or source — straight into an empty Ableton Set.
The problem
When the timecode master rolls, Live has to be exactly where the show is — and Ableton can't chase LTC on its own. Bolt-on chasers re-seek on every frame and glitch the audio; roll the master mid-song and the playhead bounces between songs. And when someone hands you a timecoded session from another rig or DAW, there's no clean way to land it in Ableton on the grid, in time, on the first take.
How it works
Feed your SMPTE master into any audio input — an interface channel, not a plugin slot. LiveTC reads the timecode audio directly, mono, at a healthy −18 to −12 dBFS.
It decodes the timecode printed inside your Set's clips — or reads your TC-tagged Arrangement Locators — to learn exactly which timecode belongs where in the arrangement.
As LTC comes in, LiveTC maps it to a target beat and seeks Live's transport there, then coasts — free-running and correcting drift by tempo nudge until the show actually moves.
Point it at a timecoded session from any DAW or rig and it records the whole run into an empty Set — punched in on the grid, with a locator and take report per song.
Steady playback = zero seeks. It only moves when the show moves.
Under the hood
The decode, follow, and capture engine — nine parts, one job: keep Live exactly where the timecode says, and never glitch getting there.
Every seek restarts Live's playhead, so LiveTC seeks only on a genuine relocation — first lock, a song change, a confirmed master jump, or drift past a frame-safe floor — and free-runs the rest of the time. Steady playback issues zero seeks.
Grid keeps the timecode-to-bar-line relationship with proportional, watchdogged tempo nudges. TC-Only never writes tempo and locks the timeline straight to timecode — the right mode for unwarped material.
Record someone else's timecoded playback into an empty Set: incoming LTC jumps Live to absolute position, arrangement record punches in atomically, a dropout grace window rides through signal loss, and every take ends with a named locator and report.
In Grid capture, LiveTC analyses the recorded click and builds a silent, warp-marked tempo clip that reconstructs the show's tempo map — so bar lines land on the beat, hands-free, across a multi-song roll.
A purpose-built C decoder locks bandlimited, low-level, and jittery LTC — biphase-mark decode with adaptive-hysteresis edge detection and a 2-frame outlier guard, so one bad frame never chases the transport to the wrong section.
Name your Arrangement Locators with a timecode and LiveTC jumps there the moment the master's LTC enters each cue's range — the fast path for multi-song setlists. Start the master mid-song and it lands you mid-song.
Print your show's timecode onto arrangement clips and LiveTC decodes the LTC inside each clip to build the timecode-to-position map. File names are ignored — the map comes from the audio, so a mislabeled clip still lands correctly.
Handles 24, 25, 29.97 NDF, 29.97 DF, and 30, drop-frame arithmetic included, and can auto-detect the incoming rate off the decoded signal instead of trusting a menu setting.
Feed-forward lead is computed from frame rate, audio buffer, and processing — plus the OSC round-trip measured live against your bridge. A CAL loopback take reads the residual offset back to you in a single 60-second pass.
Capture Mode
Point LiveTC at a timecoded playback session from any DAW or rig and it records the entire run into an empty Ableton Set — absolute timecode lock, atomic punch-in with the transport, a dropout grace window that rides through signal loss, and a per-take report with a named locator for every song. In Grid capture it even reconstructs the show's tempo map from the recorded click, hands-free.
Why LiveTC
Specifications
LiveTC is a standalone macOS menu-bar app that talks to Live over its own minimal Remote Script — no Max for Live, no plugin host, no freezing. The proven M4L device ships as the fallback you can put on a show right now.
Yes. The native app is a standalone macOS menu-bar application that drives Ableton over its own minimal Remote Script — no Max, no plugin host, no freezing. A proven Max for Live device ships alongside it as the fallback you can put on a show today.
Every seek restarts Live's playhead, so LiveTC seeks only on a genuine relocation — first lock, a song change, a confirmed master jump, or drift past a frame-safe threshold — and free-runs in between. Small drift while playing is trimmed by a proportional tempo nudge rather than a jump, so MIDI events never skip or double-fire.
Grid maintains the timecode-to-bar-line relationship with tempo nudges — use it for warped, grid-based Sets. TC-Only never writes tempo; it locks the timeline directly to timecode and re-seeks only past an 80 ms drift floor. It's the correct mode for sessions of unwarped clips, where a tempo nudge can't fix audible drift and would make a playing clip jump.
Slaving Ableton to a house or front-of-house timecode master for show triggering, cueing lighting and video, or running a redundant backup rig locked to the same SMPTE as the main playback. Capture Mode also lets you pull a timecoded session from another DAW or rig into Ableton, on the grid, without re-performing it.
The decode, follow, and capture engine is complete and passes its full offline self-test suite. The last step before general release is a live-rig sign-off run to finalize timing tuning and confirm end-to-end lock. The Max for Live device is shipping and in use now — which is why this is early access.
macOS 12 or later, Ableton Live (11.3.25+ for Capture Mode, 12.4+ recommended), and an audio input carrying your LTC. The app installs its own Remote Script from inside the menu bar — you select it once as the Control Surface in Live.
Early access
We bring people in as builds firm up — engineers and playback techs who'll put the decode and follow path under real load. Leave your email and we'll reach out with an early-access build.
