Why is TV 29.97 frames per second?

2016-10-03

[public] 1.91M views, 69.9K likes, 893 dislikes audio only

I look at the historical quirks which gave us TV at 29.97 frames per second. In North America at least. It's a comfortable 25 fps in Europe.

More on that thing I mentioned at the end of the video here:

https://www.patreon.com/standupmaths

Here is the spherical video I was making with Henry Segerman which made me research NTSC frame rates in the first place:

/youtube/video/Yp12c3-IL-I

Yes, technically, if you divide 4,500,000 by 286 you get a horizontal frequency of 15,734.26573 lines per second. That matches a frame rate of 29.97002997002997… and so old TVs used 30/1.001 = 29.97002997002997…

CORRECTIONS:

- A lot of people pointing out that increasing the number of horizontal lines without increasing the bandwidth would be a loss of resolution. Which is a good point.

Music by Howard Carter

Design by Simon Wright

MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician

Website: http://standupmaths.com/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/standupmaths

Nerdy maths toys: http://mathsgear.co.uk/