Field dominance

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In video engineering, field dominance refers to the choice of which field of an interlaced video signal is chosen as the point at which video edits occur. There are only two choices for field dominance in normal interlaced video: odd or even. Interlacing divides the frame into two fields, scanning the odd numbered lines first and then the even numbered lines. Each field is scanned in 1/60th of a second under NTSC (actually 1/59.94 in drop frame color TV video) or 1/50th of a second under PAL. Proper field dominance selection in linear editing systems will maintain color framing synch.

Re-editing old video material already edited with a different field dominance conventions can be problematic, as it can lead to "flash fields" when old and new edits are made too close together.