Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Of course, drop-frame timecode itself imperfectly compensates for the fractional framerate, and also as a result of the math not really working out there isn't a drop-frame standard for 23.976 fps at all, so sometimes the industry just throws up its hands and says "meh, it's too hard."


It's not that they don't have DF for 23.976 because it's hard, they don't because it wasn't needed. A 23.976 framerate was never broadcasted as it wasn't part of the NTSC standard. In fact, rarely did anyone actually edit at 23.976 unless it was going back to film. They cut the telecined film as 29.97 video with no regard to A-frames or any other methods that would enable the edit to cleanly go back to source frame rate. They so didn't care that some times the film cadence changes on every single edit. Why? Because nobody needed it nor could they possibly imagine the time of the internet and digital streaming that could do any frame rate to even bother wasting time trying to do it "right".


Well it _is_ in the standards now and you still see just non-drop timecode being used on it, with the resulting noticeable skew from wall time as the duration gets up there.


Again, it is not a broadcast standard, at least in the US. Pretty sure it's not in non-US markets either. Sure, it's a format that modern decoders and monitors can handle, but it's just not a format that people are concerned about it matching wall clock.


23.976 is in ATSC I'm pretty sure, but I take your point that in practice it's not used for broadcast.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: