Timecode is important because it identifies individual frames of your video and is used throughout any video editing system. It's rather like the page numbers of a book. If you want to look up a page or keep track of where you are being able to assume that page 235 comes 15 pages after page 220 is pretty fundamental! If your page numbers are out of sequence, have gaps, or repeated sequences then things get very confusing for the reader. Likewise, if a video tape has discontinuous timecode similar confusion occurs for a non-linear editing system, in particular when it comes to finding a clip on tape again during batch capture. If you want to keep your sanity it's vital to ensure that you record continuous timecode on your tape.