LANC or Local Application Control Bus System, also known as Control-L is a protocol by Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 used to synchronize camcorder

Camcorder

A camcorder is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage...

s and camera

Camera

A camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...

s.

LANC is a terminal on Sony as well as other manufacturers' camcorders which enables other accessories like Tripods with a control handle to control the camera with a wire connected to a LANC port without dealing with buttons on the camera itself. It is also available on many still cameras, where it is called ACC (the DSC-xxxx series of cameras).

The bi-directional protocol is made up of 8 (8-bit) bytes, usually clocked by the camera at 9600 bit/s. Each frame of bytes occurs in sync with the beginning of each video frame (NTSC

NTSC

NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...

 or PAL

PAL

PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...

). The physical connector is either a 5-pin mini-DIN connector and jack or a 2.5mm 3-conductor phone jack and plug (TRS connector

TRS connector

A TRS connector is a common family of connector typically used for analog signals including audio. It is cylindrical in shape, typically with three contacts, although sometimes with two or four . It is also called an audio jack, phone jack, phone plug, and jack plug...

).

In newer Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 digital Handycam(R) camcorders with 10-pin multi-A/V remote terminal jacks, LANC is available, but not directly accessible without making a custom/home-made adapter cable or a pre-made cable by Sony Part# J-6082-535-A. Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 RM-AV2 Remote Commander is an example of a LANC controller which plugs into the Sony 10-pin multi-A/V remote terminal jack.

Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 "Control-S" is a similar interface, but it is uni-directional providing control-only, and not feedback from the device being controlled.

Panasonic

Panasonic

Panasonic is an international brand name for Japanese electric products manufacturer Panasonic Corporation, which was formerly known as Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd...

 Control-M

Control-M

Control-M may refer to:* An alternative way to do a carriage return in the ASCII character set* A scheduling computer software, see BMC Control-M* Panasonic Professional/Industrial video 5-pin mini-DIN editing Control-M protocol...

 is a similar 5-pin mini-DIN bi-directional interface and protocol which has a different implementation.