The unit of time called the Flick is equivalent to exactly 1/705,600,000 of a second.
Flicks are a small unit of time that are very evenly divisible by common file format time durations; i.e., for common durations they will have no rounding.
The figure was chosen so that frequencies of 24, 25, 30, 48, 50, 60, 90, 100 and 120 Hz, as well as 1/1000 divisions of all those, can be represented with integers. A flick is approximately 1.417 ns.
Due to the Nyquist Limit, this type should not be used for frequencies higher than ~400MHz.
In a 64bit type, the Flick can represent durations as an exact count up to ~414 years in length. This library implements them with the Haskell Integer type, which is unbounded.
A similar unit for integer representation of temporal points was proposed in 2004 under the name TimeRef, splitting a second into 14,112,000 parts. This makes 1 TimeRef equivalent to 50 Flicks.
First I saw of this idea was Christopher Horvath's description.
- 24 fps frame: 29,400,000 flicks
- 25 fps frame: 28,224,000 flicks
- 30 fps frame: 23,520,000 flicks
- 48 fps frame: 14,700,000 flicks
- 50 fps frame: 14,112,000 flicks
- 60 fps frame: 11,760,000 flicks
- 90 fps frame: 7,840,000 flicks
- 100 fps frame: 7,056,000 flicks
- 120 fps frame: 5,880,000 flicks
We can also do common audio rates with precise numbers of flicks:
- 8000 hz: 88,200 flicks
- 16000 hz: 44,100 flicks
- 22050 hz: 32,000 flicks
- 24000 hz: 29,400 flicks
- 32000 hz: 22,050 flicks
- 44100 hz: 16,000 flicks
- 48000 hz: 14,700 flicks
- 88200 hz: 8,000 flicks
- 96000 hz: 7,350 flicks
- 192000 hz: 3,675 flicks