Time Format: Difference between Drop / non-Drop frame

[awake]

It seems like this should be obvious - drop frames or don’t drop frames - but I am not sure what that actually means in the context of what is shown in the preview.

As a bit of background, I have been used to seeing the location of the playhead in hours:minutes:seconds:frames, but somehow I must have changed it to Settings->Time Format->Clock, which showed fractions of seconds instead of frames. Changing from Clock to either Timecode (Drop frame) or Timecode (Non-drop frame) shows it the way I am used to, but I can’t see a difference between them.

I checked the User Guide and searched the forum, but did not come up with any hits - that doesn’t mean I haven’t missed something, so I apologize if this is already addressed somewhere.

[shotcut]

Glossary / Terminology

Alpha channel An alpha channel is a part of the image data that describes each pixel’s level of opacity or translucency. Contrast that with the other data, which describes light and color. Many people think of an alpha channel as a transparency mask. However, that can lead one to think of it as rather binary - opaque or transparent - whereas most often an alpha channel has at least 256 levels. Aspect ratio Aspect ratio is how the width of a rectangle compares with its height. In other words, …

[awake]

Got it! I did not think to look in the glossary, but next time I will add that to my search.

Many thanks! Your responsiveness to questions is remarkable and greatly, greatly appreciated.