drop frame, n. (drop frām) 1. video production: the type of time-based signifier in editing that compensates for the NTCS (North American) color coding system, which runs at 29.97 frames per second rather than the identified 30, by removing or "dropping" two frames every minute save the tenth. The PAL (European) "colour" system runs at exactly 30 frames per second and thus requires neither drop frame nor non-drop frame distinctions; it's just editing over there.
From the Old English verb dropa, meaning "to traverse the abyss betwixt one's self and ye blessed Earthe," and the Old Norse verb frama or fremja, meaning "Stop your looting, Vikings, and get back on the freakin' boat!"
29 March 2006
And yet not so, for what can we bequeath
Save our deposed bodies to the ground?
Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke's,
And nothing can we call our own but death
And that small model of the barren earth
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.
"Richard II"
by William Shakespeare
