A large SMPTE timecode or bars'n'beats display along with some 8 channel recording options. This basically mimicks the big time windows available in most DAWs and the simple purpose behind them: keeping an overview on where on the timeline you are.

The timecode displayed here is part of the DAW control data received on the app's first MIDI connection. Since version 1.5 there is an option to also display MTC received on the second connection. See the last column.

Besides timecode there are some more controls available here when touching the screen over, on and underneath the timecode:

Double-taps in the upper half (or both when in MTC mode) bring up the menu, single touches show controls for quick multitrack recording situations.

You get record enable switches for the current block of eight channel (plus solo and mute controls when repeatedly pressing the shift button) and some transport / record controls. The locator functions will change with the shift button from locator to marker and finally to channel block shifting mode.

Touching the timecode display will switch between SMPTE and bars'n'beats display (not available in all DAWs) and you can do horizontal swipes on the timecode to alter its length and refresh rate (see below).

When not in MTC mode the area underneath the timecode acts as a jogwheel and can be switched to scrub mode by double-clicking. The timecode will change color when the DAW enters scrub mode. What exactly jog and scrub functions do depends on the DAW to some extend.

Note that the UI can also be locked in the app's settings. It will then not react to any touch events except from back swipes.

If MIDI timecode display is enabled at Setup / MIDI utilities / Big Time, the screen will show MTC or MIDI Clock received on the app's second MIDI connection. Recording and transport controls remain active, but Mackie or HUI timecode will no longer be shown. The SMPTE type of incoming MIDI timecode is shown with the colons seperating hours, minutes, seconds and frames:

24 fps: all single colons (10.20.30.40)
25 fps: double-colon before frames field; (10.20.30:40)
29.97 non-drop: all double-colons (10:20:30:40)
29.97 drop: double-colons and a semi-colon before the frames field (10:20:30;40)

For correct bar and beat numbers when displaying MIDI Clock the app needs to also receive Song Position Pointers.

Do not send MTC and MIDI Clock simultanously as both would update the display and cause chaos.
Running MIDI timecode or clock and Mackie Control in parallel will put significantly more load onto your network. Not really recommended!

Changing timecode display length

Display of all timecode variants (MCU, HUI and MTC) can be adjusted to show only a reduced set of fields. You can display bars and beats but no ticks or minutes and seconds without hours and frames. To do so perform horizontal swipes on the displayed timecode. Swipe towards the screen border to push a field out (ie: hide it) and towards screen center to pull it back in again (make it visible). This can be done on both start and end of the timecode depending on which half of the screen you're in.

TouchDAW will trim the timecode using simple string index operations and at times you may have to pull in on one side before being able to push out on the other, but it should allow for targeted

display of all continous substrings down to the minimum display length, which is 5. Dots, colons etc. count as characters.

Note that the maximum fontsize needs to be limited to avoid OpenGL errors. On large xhdpi tablets (Nexus 10, Kindle HDX) the shortest possible timecode length will not really fill the screen.

Poor man's streamer bars

Also new in 1.53 is the option to show two simple streamer bars on top of and underneath the timecode. Streamers are usually drawn over video displays in ADR studios to give speakers an easy visual representation of their take's ellapsed and total time, but they may be useful with just timecode and no video as well.

Other than with most streamer solutions you don't program start and end times with TouchDAW, but simply send it MIDI pitchbend commands on MIDI channels 15 and 16 over the app's second MIDI connection. This allows for easy reprogramming of the streamer by moving around and stretching a MIDI part that contains a continous pitch ramp on a MIDI track in the DAW. You can also do MIDI controlled count-ins etc. with this approach. See the screenshots below for an example. Here the "Count in" part will flash the upper streamer four times before the "Rise" part starts increasing the lower's position over the entire part's duration while the "Fall" part will decrement the upper.

As of version 2.2.0 this screen can also act as a recording light or display:

When timecode is running and a MCU / HUI record command is received, timecode will turn red and go back to normal when recording stops. The colors for both states can be changed in the setup.

If you do not want this functionality at all, set both colors to the same value.

When no timecode was received since the screen launched, the first record command will change the displayed text to "Recording", which will then be color-toggled between the set "Recording Light Color" and a dimmed down gray.

If you do not need timecode and only want the text you can prevent the screen from receiving Mackie timecode (which usually can not be turned off in DAWs) by setting it to display MIDI timecode and then not sending it any MTC.