Resolution

Resolution is the number of individual elements that make up a picture or a frame of video.

When dealing with digital video or images, resolution is quite straightforward. The image is made up of thousands of different squares. When editing DV video in NTSC, the resolution is 720 (horizontal) by 480 (vertical).

When dealing with analog video, resolution gets more complicated. A TV set has a fixed number of horizontal lines that it displays. In other words, similar to a digital image, it has a set vertical resolution. In NTSC, the vertical resolution is 482. Because the video is interlaced, only 241 lines are displayed for each field. Horizontal resolution, on the other hand, is not fixed in the system. Horizontal resolution is the same as number of alternating black and white vertical lines that can be desplayed without being blurred together. It is sometimes measured across the whole TV, and sometimes only in the fraction of the width that is as wide as the tv is tall. This can lead to confusion.