MIDI Time CodeTime Code. One of two protocols for MIDI Sync. MTC is a way of transmitting SMPTE timecodetime code or other time-reference data over a MIDI cable. SMPTE and MTC don’t provide any start or stop commands, nor do they change with tempo. They provide an absolute (positional) timing reference in minutes and seconds, rather than a music-related timing reference in bars and beats. Unlike SMPTE, MTC must share a MIDI cable with sequence information, so it is not as fast or accurate. This is not usually a problem, but if the MIDI channel is close to capacity, MTC data may be delayed, producing a small amount of timing jitter. An additional part of the MTC specification is the Setup message, which allows the specification of a list of events that should occur at specific times.
See MIDI Delay(2), MIDI Clock.