Film Frames and Video Fields

When transferring film to videotape, part of the film image must be transferred to one field and then the rest to another field of video. This is due to the way that video signals are formatted.

In video signals, each frame or single image is composed of 2 video fields, each containing half of the image. The first field contains all the odd horizontal lines of resolution and the second field contains the even horizontal lines of the image. This is called interlacing and is needed to minimize the flicker effect that would result if the image was presented all at once.

A film frame, however, is a single, complete image (like a 35 mm photograph). That means that there are no fields involved.