'Certified Automatic Timing' question

[buckeye II]

The preliminaries for a district high school meet were held in Central Ohio last night. As a psuedo-historian, I was contacted by a coach asking about the following timing system. The timing was called certified automatic, but is not accutrack or lynx. It consists of a videotape of the race with a clock on the tape. A spotting scope at the finish line picks up the flash of the gun to start the clock. It tended to give relatively fast times all evening. All times were recorded as 0 in the thousands place and 1,2,3.... were added to distinguish place. For example the 100 times were 1):10.60 2):10.60 3):10.61 4):10.65. The time in question is third. He was hand timed by three different coaches in :10.62, :10.66, & :10.71. His school has a 64 year old hand timed school record of :10.7. From anyone with experience with this timing system, should this be deemed a school record and if so, at what time? My hopes are that the young man runs sub :10.7 next week when accutrack will be used. My initial thought is that it is a record, but I do not know how to place the time. I am using the theory that we do not know anything about the hand timing used in the previous record either, so hand time could/should be accepted. Those with experience, please give feedback.

[decamouse]

Re: 'Certified Automatic Timing' question

Sounds like you are talking about a Pyro Bright Timing System - seen used a some big college meets - never seemed to make me run any faster than my normal slow time - does not interface with meet management software such as Hytec -

[vaulter83]

Re: 'Certified Automatic Timing' question

must be Pyro Bright. Special shells are put in the starting gun that emit a bright flash and a spotting scope is used that picks it up and starts the clock on a video tape. The officials then go back and watch the video to determine time and places.

[buckeye II]

Re: 'Certified Automatic Timing' question

Thanks! Does anyone have experience with the reliability of times and the explanation of everyt time's thousandth's place ending in 0? Officials? Meet managers?

[sl]

Re: 'Certified Automatic Timing' question

If the system uses a regular (NTSC) video camera, those run at 30 frames per second. Timing to the 100th would not be possible and you'd have to round those times up to the next-highest 10th.

>Thanks! Does anyone have experience with the reliability of times and the
>explanation of everyt time's thousandth's place ending in 0? Officials? Meet
>managers?

[buckeye II]

Re: 'Certified Automatic Timing' question

Thanks for the help to those that responded. I'm bumping this back up looking for those with experience with this pyro-bright timing. In the scenario I gave in the original post, the guys came back in the final with FAT and ran 11.1's and 11.2's. The kid in question broke a school record from 1940, but the timing is obviously questionable. Anyone?