What is the "flick", the new time unit invented by Facebook

How many clicks can you make in a flick?

Sounds like an absurd rhyme, but it's not. In fact, you probably never get to complete a click for each flick.

But what is a flick?

In English, a flick is a snap. and "Flick" is also the name given to him by Facebook to his new measure of time.

For the vast majority of us — at least, for those of us who are not dedicated to computing — is imperceptible; equals 1/705.600.000 seconds, or, which is the same, 1, 417233560090703e-9 seconds.

In other words, this is the abbreviation for frame-tick.

Are you still confused? Here's another explanation: it is a unit less than the microsecond... but greater than a nanosecond.

Entering more in matter, it can be said that the "flicks" measure in an exact way what lasts each frame in a video. And that is something that neither the hours, nor the minutes, nor the milliseconds, nor the nanoseconds (not even the Yoctosegundos) were able to offer.

The idea was born from the mind of Christopher Horvath, a Facebook engineer who works at Oculus VR, the virtual reality Department of the technological giant.

"Do you remember that time when it took me weeks to design a unit of time, with help from (many of) you, and then it took me a year to develop it in the open source of Facebook (it was my fault, not theirs)? The flicks are already a reality! "Bravo!" published the engineer in the social network.

Edit "in a flick"
Many may not understand Horvath's enthusiasm, but for those who work with sound and digital video It makes a lot of sense.

The flicks will allow developers and designers to synchronize the speed and frame effects (each of the cinematographic images) during the editing process.

And it is that, as Horvarth explained, the decimals can cause many headaches when executing that task.

From now on, each of these frames will be represented by a "flick", facilitating their work, so that they can work with integers, instead of infinite decimals.

In addition, each "flick" is divisible between key numbers when producing content: 8, 16, 22.05, 24, 25, 30, 32, 44.1, 48, 50, 60, 90, 100, or 120.

For example, the vast majority of films are photographed at 24 frames per second (FPS) and the vast majority of monitors sold today are 60 hertz (HZ), while the music usually encodes at 44.1 khz or 48 khz.

A measure to "fix" errors
According to a researcher from the University of Oxford, UK, who preferred not to make his name public, the "flicks" will not have too much impact on a general level, although they could help to create better experiences of virtual reality.

As the specialist told the BBC, this new time measure may be useful in dealing with latency issues, which is the time it takes for the lenses to receive the image from the computer.

"There is the notion of presence and immersion. Presence is the notion in your brain that you are there; Immersion is the implication you feel with a computer game. "

"The presence is very easy to break. The new time unit may give developers more flexibility in managing latency issues and making sure the videos stay synchronized. "

In the programming language, this new time unit is called C + + and allows to generate effects in cinema, television and other media.

Matt Hammond, principal investigator of the BBC's research and development team, says flicks can reduce graphical flicker errors (stuttering) in some images.

"When the numbers that are used are not integers, errors can gradually affect computational calculations. These mistakes can accumulate over time and eventually cause inaccuracies that become perceptible, "Hammond explains.

But this is not the first time that a large technology company creates a time unit.

Swatch Watches company introduced the "Hora Internet" in 1998, which divides the day into 1,000 units llamadas"beats".

The measure — equivalent to 1 minute and 26.4 seconds — was designed to eliminate the need for time zones, but failed to become a universal concept. Many say that it was rather a market strategy without a scientific basis.