Flicks

Basics

A flick (frame-tick) is a very small unit of time. It is 1/705600000 of a second, exactly.

1 flick = 1/705600000 second

This unit of time is the smallest time unit which is LARGER than a nanosecond, and can in integer quantities exactly represent a single frame duration for 24 Hz, 25 Hz, 30 Hz, 48 Hz, 50 Hz, 60 Hz, 90 Hz, 100 Hz, 120 Hz, and also 1/1000 divisions of each, as well as a single sample duration for 8 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, and 192kHz, as well as the NTSC frame durations for 24 * (1000/1001) Hz, 30 * (1000/1001) Hz, 60 * (1000/1001) Hz, and 120 * (1000/1001) Hz.

That above was one hell of a run-on sentence, but it's strictly and completely correct in its description of the unit.

This makes flicks suitable for use via std::chrono::duration and std::ratio for doing timing work against the system high resolution clock, which is in nanoseconds, but doesn't get slightly out of sync when doing common frame rates.

We also support some common audio sample rates as well. This list is not exhaustive, but covers the majority of digital audio formats. They are 8kHz, 16kHz, 22.05kHz, 24kHz, 32kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, and 192kHz.

Though it is not part of the design criteria, 144 Hz, which some newer monitors refresh at, does work correctly with flicks.

NTSC IS NOT EXPLICITLY SUPPORTED IN ALL OF ITS SUBTLE NUANCES, BUT: The NTSC variations (~23.976, ~29.97, etc) are approximately defined as 24 * 1000/1001 and 30 * 1000/1001, etc. These can be represented exactly in flicks, but 1/1000 divisions are not available.

Many folks online have pointed out that NTSC technically has a variable frame rate, and that this is handled correctly in other media playback libraries such as QuickTime. The goal of flicks is to provide a simple, convenient std::chrono::duration to work with when writing code that works with simulation and time in media, but not explicitly to handle complex variable-rate playback scenarios. So we'll stick with the 1000/1001 approximations, and leave it at that!

Details

24 fps frame: 29400000 flicks
25 fps frame: 28224000 flicks
30 fps frame: 23520000 flicks
48 fps frame: 14700000 flicks
50 fps frame: 14112000 flicks
60 fps frame: 11760000 flicks
90 fps frame: 7840000 flicks
100 fps frame: 7056000 flicks
120 fps frame: 5880000 flicks
8000 fps frame: 88200 flicks
16000 fps frame: 44100 flicks
22050 fps frame: 32000 flicks
24000 fps frame: 29400 flicks
32000 fps frame: 22050 flicks
44100 fps frame: 16000 flicks
48000 fps frame: 14700 flicks
88200 fps frame: 8000 flicks
96000 fps frame: 7350 flicks
192000 fps frame: 3675 flicks

NTSC:

24 * 1000/1001 (~23.976) fps frame: 29429400 flicks
30 * 1000/1001 (~29.97) fps frame: 23543520 flicks
60 * 1000/1001 (~59.94) fps frame: 11771760 flicks
120 * 1000/1001 (~119.88) fps frame: 5885880 flicks

Motivation

When working creating visual effects for film, television, and other media, it is common to run simulations or other time-integrating processes which subdivide a single frame of time into a fixed, integer number of subdivisions. It is handy to be able to accumulate these subdivisions to create exact 1-frame and 1-second intervals, for a variety of reasons.

Knowing that you should never, ever use floating point representations for accumulated, simulated time (lest your temporal accuracy degrade over time), the std::chrono time tools in C++ are ideal. However, the highest usable resolution, nanoseconds, doesn't evenly divide common film & media framerates. This was the genesis of this unit.

Acknowledgements

This time unit began as a technical question posted publicly on Facebook by Christopher Horvath in late 2016. Many people contributed and refined the unit, including Dan Goldman, Pascal Pincosy, Simon Eves, Kearsley Higgins, Francisco De La Torre, Benjy Feen, Eric Landreneau and Sebastian Sylwan, among others. Here's the post! https://www.facebook.com/christopher.horvath.395/posts/1157292757692660

Installation

Just place flicks.h wherever you install C++ header files - this is a header only library. Flicks are placed in the "util" namespace here, for lack of a clear alternative. It would be nice if they were in std:: someday.

Note that you can just skip all of that and put this directly into your code.


#include <chrono>
#include <ratio>
using flicks = std::chrono::duration<std::chrono::nanoseconds::rep, std::ratio<1, 705600000>>;

That's right! The entire library is technically just one line of code, if you don't worry about a few convenience functions.

Derivation

A C++ file which implements a derivation of flicks is provided - it is not required to use the library, but only to show how it was derived. A brute-force approach was intentionally used. To compile, assuming you have a C++ compiler installed, just do this:

> c++ -o flicks_derivation flicks_derivation.cpp -std=c++14; ./flicks_derivation

Test

A C++ file which tests flicks is provided - it is not required to use the library, but only to test the unit. To compile, assuming you have a C++ compiler installed, just do this:

> c++ -o flicks_test flicks_test.cpp -std=c++14; ./flicks_test

Motivating example

A C++ file demonstrating a simplified version of the production case in which we first encountered this problem is provided. It shows first a failure case, and then a fixed example using flicks. It is implemented using plain integers for illustration purposes.

> c++ -o flicks_motivation flicks_motivation.cpp -std=c++14; ./flicks_motivation

Makefile

A makefile is provided that works on a Linux-y system or OSX, but not Windows. To use it:

> make

To clean up:

> make clean

Previous Work

In a previous work lead by Sorbonne University and the French National Institute of Audiovisual, TimeRefs were defined as 1/14112000s, giving 1 TimeRef=50 Flicks. See Troncy, R., Carrive, J., Lalande, S., Poli, J.-P., "A motivating scenario for designing an extensible audio-visual description language". In CORIMEDIA’04, Sherbrooke, Canada, October 2004.

License

BSD License

For Flicks software

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