GSM Glossary of Terms

CIF was designed to be easy to convert to PAL or NTSC standards. CIF defines a video sequence with a resolution of 352 × 288 like PAL Source Input Format, a framerate of 30000/1001 (roughly 29.97) frames like NTSC, with colour encoded using YCbCr 4:2:0. QCIF means "Quarter CIF". To have one fourth of the area as "quarter" implies the height and width of the frame are halved. Terms also used are SQCIF (Sub Quarter CIF, sometimes subQCIF), 4CIF (4× CIF) and 16CIF (16× CIF). Video resolutions (in pixels) Format NTSC-based PAL-based