What is frame movie mode?

What is frame movie mode?

• What is frame movie mode? I was snooping around digital cameras and I came across the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W80. It has a mode called "frame movie mode" but no further explanation. What does that mean? Don't the people who put together this literature know that most people shopping for a camera don't know what these fancy phrases mean?

• Answer:

  Frame mode means the video is not interlaced. Typically video is shot at 60fps, but in the old days the equipment couldn't handle that much information at one time. So one frame would record half the image (all the even numbered lines) and the next frame would record the other half (all the odd numbered ones). This is why if you try to take a photo of an old tv screen, the image looks like crap -- the camera is probably only getting half the image. Our eyes don't see the difference, so the image appears all at once to us. Frame mode takes advantage of the increased processing power of modern cameras, and captures the whole image for each frame. Why would you use it? Well in some cases it can look a little more like film, which (naturally) captures an entire frame each time. Film has a slightly stroboscopic effect (that's why wagon wheels seem to turn backwards in old westerns) in that each frame is a discreet image. Another reason is if you are going to do screen grabs -- they will look much better than if they are interlaced. Here is a good primer on this subject (better than me!) http://www.adamwilt.com/DV-FAQ-etc.html#filmlook