Video Formats
Martha Mollison · 2020
Before high definition TV came in, the hype was that it would end the problem of there being many different video formats. Although video technology is different and readers can’t see pictures when just looking at recorded videotape, a frame is still the term used for one complete picture. In Phase Alternate Line and SystEme Electronique Couleur Avec Memoire, it takes 625 horizontal lines of picture information to make up one single frame of video. With interlace-scan, each complete frame of video is separated into halves, into what are called fields. Each field is made up of half the horizontal lines of picture information—but not the top half and the bottom half, or the right half and the left half. Some more recent formats of video use progressive scanning. Progressive scanning means that the horizontal lines are scanned in sequential order and the entire image is presented as a whole each time. Computer screens use progressive scanning.