NTSC is a color TV standard developed in the U.S. in 1953 by the National Television System Committee. NTSC uses aFrame consisting of 486 horizontal lines in theActive Area and aFramerate of 29.97fps. The frame isinterlaced, meaning it's composed of two individual fields (pictures) with aFieldrate of 59.94fps.

The term NTSC may also be used to describe any video, including digital video, formatted for playback on a NTSC TV. This generally includes anyStandard Definition (SD) video with a verticalResolution of up to 480Pixels and a horizontalResolution no greater than 720, which also has aFramerate of 29.97fps. NTSC is sometimes referred to as525/60, in reference to the total number of lines (including lines not in theActive Area) and approximateFieldrate. Digital formats include only 480 of NTSC's 486 visibleScanlines due to the need to guarantee mod16Resolution, meaning its divisible evenly by 16.

Geography
NTSC is used in United States, Canada, Japan, in most of the American continent countries and in various Asian countries. NTSC content can also be viewed on the majority ofPAL TVs sold in recent years are also capable of displaying NTSC video, generally in a format known asPAL 60. This involves resizing the image to fill the larger number ofScanlines on aPAL TV (625 - 576 visible) and converting the color encoding to theYUV standard used byPAL TVs. The framerate remains at 29.97fps.

Framerate
NTSC's Framerate has been the source of much confusion over the years. It was chosen in order to ensure backwards compatibility with older black and white televisions already in widespread use when the NTSC standard was developed. In order to add the additional color information, the framerate had to be slowed very slightly from the then standard of 30fps. In order to avoid major changes it was slowed by a factor of 1.001, resulting in an actual framerate of 29.97002997002997002997002997003 - an infinitely repeating decimal. While it's common practice to use the (rounded) shorthand of 29.97fps, sometimes it's important to know the correct formula. For example, in order to convert film's 24fps framerate to NTSC's 29.97, the film must first be slowed down the same amount, resulting in another infinitely repeating decimal - 23.976023976023976023976023976024 (24 / 1.001), which rounds nicely to 23.976fps.

Capture Resolution
According to theITU-R BT.601 (Rec.601) standard for capturing analog video, the correct resolution is 720x480, with theActive Area (the area containing the actual picture) represented by the center 711 horizontalPixels. SomeCapture cards will use 720Pixels for theActive Area instead. The two lines below show the slight difference between using the full 720Pixels versus only using the center 711.


Standard Digital NTSC Formats
Various consumer digital video formats have standards designed to work with NTSC TVs. These includeVCD,SVCD,DVD, andDV. Below is a table showing the standardResolutions for each format. In the case ofDV, theFull Frame represents theActive Area of theFrame, meaning you may need to resize and add borders to the sides when converting to other formats likeMPEG-2 forDVD.DVD players may also implement the digital to analog conversion improperly, resulting in the Full Frame being squeezed into the analog video'sActive Area.

Analog Video
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-500 MCE Asus My Cinema P7131 Dual Pinnacle MediaCenter 300i
Video Capture Cards with Analog Video Inputs

Glossary

Select a term to see the explanation

File extensions

Select a file extension to see its definition

Sections:

• Tech News
• Guides and Tutorials
• Software Downloads
• Top Downloads
• Forums
• Glossary

Follow us:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Instagram
• RSS Feeds:
  • Latest News
  • Software Updates