Time is divided in a way that makes it easy to read and interpret, while accumulated errors are corrected with minimal effort (for example, leap years). However, these traditional fractions can cause problems in specific environments. More than once, visual artists and programmers are forced to work on a nanosecond scale, but the most popular refresh rates and frequencies do not cooperate entirely. Facebook proposes a rather curious solution: Flick, a time measurement more compatible with framerates and audio frequencies.
The Problem with Time
The modern and official definition of a second classifies it as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 oscillations of the radiation emitted in the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 isotope" Put that way, the second is much more intimidating than it seems, but it wasn't always so, since in the past we used fractions of solar days and lunar months, measured with increasingly precise instruments, such as quartz clocks. The second alone is very useful, but as the scale of our work changed, we haven't hesitated to fraction it further. Milliseconds, microseconds, nanoseconds... terms very common in hardware (to measure speed or latency) and in both audio and video editing, but which often cause headaches. Why? Because all those frequencies and framerates we consider "standard" today do not divide exactly, meaning specialists must cross swords with fractions of a nanosecond in many cases. And somehow, at this point Facebook appears with its new "Flick".
What Is Flick?
That raises the question: is it a social network function, an Instagram filter, a Rift accessory, or a direct competitor to Netflix? None of that: Flick is a new unit of time defined as 1/705,600,000 of a second. And the first question that comes to mind is: "Why did Facebook invent the Flick?" Being a bit larger than a nanosecond, it fits perfectly when representing the duration of a single frame at 24 Hz, 25 Hz, 30 Hz, 48 Hz, 50 Hz, 60 Hz, 90 Hz, 100 Hz, 120 Hz, and their divisions by 1,000. This compatibility also extends to audio, with the official post mentioning 8 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, and 192 kHz. For example, a frame at 24 FPS lasts 29,400,000 Flicks, while in nanoseconds it's 41,666,666.666 (periodic).
Originally suggested by visual artist and Oculus division employee Christopher Horvath in 2016, the code behind Flick is already available on GitHub, but the rest depends on how well it is adopted. On one hand, experts already have tools to neutralize the "synchronization pains", and on the other, Flicks do not adapt to NTSC variations (23.976, 29.97, 59.94), which the text declares "inaccurate in any circumstance". In short: Facebook believes the audiovisual world needs Flick. Soon we will know what that world thinks.
