Well, first I tried to figure out how many possible different frames there could be. The facts about 1 frame are:
A frame is 720 pixels tall, 480 pixels wide, and there are a possible 256 colors per pixel
Therefore I came up with the equation 256 ^ (720 x 480)
I think that’s right to calculate the number of different images you could create with those specs.
Now if you factor in the standard NTSC framerate of 29.970 frames per second, in one second you would get 29.970 x 256 ^ (720 x 480) possible 1 second clips of video possible.
Next factor in the infinite lengths of a video and you blow the roof and it becomes an infinite number of possible different videos, which is only slightly higher than the crazy number that that above equation puts out. By the way, calculator blew up on my trying to do it so I wrote a php script which wouldn’t calculate it either.
Let’s just say that if each pixel in a 5 by 8 was either white or black, there are over a trillion possibile outcomes. ” 2 ^ (5 x 8) ” that is.
The most I was able to calculate was if there were 256 colors and 127 pixels! It came to just over:
70 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000
Even THAT number is over a
Centillion, which means that the full calculation would easily go over a
Ducentillion…. but I doubt it’ll go as high as a
Googolplex
Hmm….after doing that *tiny* calculation compared to the real possible
345 600 pixels I realize I’m going to have to put my huge calculation on hold until I find a place where I can run my super calculation.
In conclusion, I am safe in believing that the same frame of video can never truly be duplicated.