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Latency to frames converter
How much is 50 ms of input lag? It depends on the standard: 3 frames on 60 fps NTSC, 2.5 on 50 fps PAL. Convert milliseconds to frames and frames to milliseconds at the rate your game uses, and check the table of what each frame of delay means in practice.
What 1 to 5 frames of lag mean
| Frames | 60 fps (NTSC) | 50 fps (PAL) | In practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 16.7 ms | 20 ms | below the perception threshold of almost everyone |
| 2 | 33.3 ms | 40 ms | typical of a modern TV outside game mode |
| 3 | 50 ms | 60 ms | fighting game players and speedrunners already feel it |
| 4 | 66.7 ms | 80 ms | tight timing combos start to drop |
| 5 | 83.3 ms | 100 ms | visibly sluggish: parries and just frames become unviable |
Frames: the natural unit of latency
Classic consoles and arcade boards can only react to your button press when they draw the next frame. That is why the community measures input lag in frames, not milliseconds: at 60 fps each frame lasts 16.7 ms, at 50 fps it lasts 20 ms, and at 30 fps, 33.3 ms. A monitor that adds 2 frames of delay costs 33 ms on NTSC but 40 ms on PAL. The same frame count weighs differently in each standard, and that is exactly what the converter above settles.
Technical rigor for those who enjoy it: real NTSC runs at 59.94 Hz, not 60. That 0.1% difference exists because of the analog color subcarrier and only matters for timed speedruns and audio sync; for lag math, 60 is the universal convention.
And here comes the story every European gamer knows. The PAL standard redraws the screen 50 times per second, against 60 for NTSC. In the 80s and 90s most games were programmed by counting frames: move 1 pixel per frame, play one note per frame. Converted to PAL without adjustment, those games ran at the 50/60 ratio, about 17% slower, lower pitched music included. As a bonus, since PAL has more lines (576 interlaced against 480), the unfilled NTSC picture earned the famous black borders. A slower Sonic squeezed between bars: the childhood of millions of Europeans, documented today in guides such as the PAL Game Versions project.
Sources: the NTSC (59.94 Hz) and PAL (50 Hz) television standard specifications; community catalogs of PAL versions, such as PAL Game Versions, and the emulator documentation that exposes the region difference.
More CRT era tools: integer scaling calculator, 4:3 aspect ratio correction, cartridge megabit converter and console resolution archive. And if nostalgia strikes on another frequency, every pixel on these consoles was addressed in binary.
Last updated: · Methodology and sources