A ‘Flick’ is essentially 1/705,600,000 of a second and its purpose is to help sync video frame rates. The new unit of time is slightly larger than a nanosecond and it exactly subdivides media frame rates and sampling frequencies.
Facebook has invented a new unit of time called Flick which may turn out to be a boon for content creators. For those of you that don't know, movies are shot in 24 frames per second. Which means that 1/24th of a second is about 0.0416666666666666…… This is rounded off to 0.04167. Because it is rounded off, at some instant the “extra” value might break something or lead to content being out of sync. So, Flick is a unit of time, “the smallest time unit which is larger than a nanosecond,” that is defined as 1/705,600,000 of a second.
So how exactly does Flick help content creators? Well it will measure individual frame duration for video frame rates, whatever the frame rate. Whether your video is 24hz, 25hz, 30hz, 48hz, 50hz, 60hz, 90hz, 100hz, or 120hz, Flick will be able to to ensure that everything is in sync, while still using whole integers instead of the infinte 0.0416666666666666.
For example 1/24th of a second (24 frames per second or 24hz), is 29,400,000 flicks. Similarly, 1/120th (for 120hz) is 5,880,000 flicks. If you are someone that has dabbled in the world of audio and video editing, you and your peers might be the only ones that will be excited about “Flick”. It is an interesting innovation in technology and we are looking forward to seeing its implementation give content creators a little more of peace of mind.
We've launched Flicks, a unit of time, slightly larger than a nanosecond that exactly subdivides media frame rates and sampling frequencies. https://t.co/w9SDBznXRE
— Facebook Open Source (@fbOpenSource) January 22, 2018
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