SMPTE

SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) is the standard time display format for most professional animation work.

From left to right, the SMPTE format displays minutes, seconds, and frames, delineated by colons. For example:2:16:14

represents 2 minutes, 16 seconds, and 14 frames.

As you move through time in a SMPTE display, when the seconds field increments, the frames field recycles to 0 and starts over. For example, given an NTSC frame rate of 30 frames per second, as you move through time, the frames field counts from 0 to 29, at which point the seconds field increments by 1, and the frames field begins again at 0.

As with the Frames display format, the SMPTE format lets the time slider move at single-frame increments.