The edit to tape window easily enough allows you to mark an in point by typing in a numeric value or jogging around on the tape and pressing a button or I for in, however what would be nice would be ganging the tape timecode to that of the sequence timecode (so you can accurately and easily do insert edits on the tape only where is needed), you can’t do this in the edit to tape window and so this is the workaround.

The easiest way is to open the edit to tape window. Make sure to mark and in and out for the area of the timeline needing inserted back to the tape, you can use the mark clip with the X key for video only but it may be good with audio inserts to try to find where there is a moment of silence and mark with I and O.

Next step is to very methodically get in the habit of pressing shift I to go to the in point in the sequence,

this takes the playhead to the correct timecode, which will be displayed at the top left of the timeline window. It is important to do this as you can easily move the playhead and we don’t want that for the next step.

Drag from the timeline current timecode holding down the option or alt key

and drag across to the in point box in the left of the edit to tape window (where it probably says “Not Set”).

What happens is you’ve copied the timecode from one to the other and now will be inserting exactly on to the tape the exact marked area of your timeline.

Its important to make sure the timecode is set for programme start 01:00:00:00 or 10:00:00:00 depends on the country and people you are supplying the tape to.

Do that in the timeline options of the sequence settings (command 0). If you have a leader before programme start a good trick is to enter your programme start timecode and then click off and reenter the timecode with a - before the numeric value e.g. I have 2 minutes of leader so I might type -2.. into a timecode value of 10:00:00:00