ABSTRACT
A while later in the USA, a member of the National Television Standards Committee commented, while viewing an early experimental colour image: ‘What’s causing that diagonal interference pattern?’ A few quick tweaks of a reference oscillator and the frame rate was reduced from 30 fps down to 29.97 fps and, little did they realize at the time, the world was condemned to a future of increasing incompatibility, and general fear, uncertainty and doubt. Before the standards for television were set in stone, why on earth didn’t anyone consider the universal frame rate of 24 fps for sound motion pictures, recognized the world over? Perhaps the technical difficulties with early systems seemed more important at the time than potential problems that might occur in the future, but no one could have guessed the scale of the problem, the amount of effort put into designing solutions (often only partial solutions), and the time wasted correcting mistakes that would never have occurred if there was a single unified frame rate for film and video the world over.
