In NTSC, the horizontal line rate is 15.750 kHz for a pure mono signal, and 15.734 kHz for color. This is the rate at which a sync tip or back porch clamp restores the DC level of the signal. The monochrome vertical field rate is 59.94 fields per second, and the frame rate is 29.97 interlaced frames per second. This is why 30 Hz usually is cited as the lowest frequency of interest in NTSC video. It is 25 Hz for PAL.
However, there are 262.5 horizontal lines per field, and 227.5 cycles of chroma subcarrier per line, for a total of four chroma fields, two per monochrome field, so chroma-phase-aligned editing can take place in only 15 places per second. A spectrum analyzer display of an NTSC color signal shows a narrow spike at approx. 15 Hz.
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