[reaperducer]

Although, I'm sure US commercial TV stations frame drop movies to speed them up so they can insert more commercials these days anyway.

I can't say how it's done today, but at the TV station where I worked in the 1990's, we did. But we never dropped frames of content. That would cause all kinds of copyright and contract problems.

We did, however, drop frames of black and superblack. In an average hour, we were able to get back enough frames to insert an extra 15-second commercial at the top of the hour.

[pantulis]

What is "superblack"?

[extraduder_ire]

In a TV signal, the brightness is encoded using certain signal levels. So you'll have a set black point, and white point representing the darkest and brightest values to be displayed respectively.

If you send a signal outside those bands, it's known as a superblack/superwhite. The "blanking interval" (when the beam is meant to start at the top of the screen again) has a signal blacker than any black that would show up in a broadcast. If that were not the case, a black screen in a show would mess up your TVs tracking.

[pantulis]

Thanks!