29.97 Drop Frame vs 29.97 Non-Drop Frame

29.97 Drop and Non-Drop Frame are two formats in the NTCS standard.

In the times of black and white television there were exactly 30 frames of video every second. After a colour TV was introduced, it was necessary to reduce the frame count to 29.97 per second due to technical reasons. The difference of 0.03 frames per second makes 108 frames excess during an hour. To compensate this difference Drop Frame timecode skips the count of two frames at the top of each minute except of every 10th minute.

The Non-Drop Frame format does not compensate 0.03 difference every second.




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