One second

24 letters / 24 frames / one second

00:00:00:00

Frame

The standard

How it is laid out

Frame numbers Hold the letters that have passed

The name has 24 letters. Film runs at 24 frames a second. So the mark is a second of film: one letter to a frame, the whole name in a second, and an ident that never needs to be any other length. On paper the same second is a strip of 24 numbered frames, or the 24-cell grid the system already uses. No sprockets, no leader, no beam of light: the only thing borrowed from cinema is the arithmetic. Our programme data runs at 25, where the mark is 0.96 of a second, which is either a problem or the joke.

← The mark