AfterDawn: Glossary

SECAM (Sequential Couleur Avec Memoire or Sequential Colour with Memory color TV standard was introduced in the early 1960's and implemented in France. Except for the color encoding scheme, it's nearly identical to the PAL standard. SECAM uses the same 576 line Active Area as PAL, as well as nearly all other .

Geography
SECAM is used in France, former French colonies and in several eastern European countries. Because of its great similiarities with PAL, including the same framerate and Active Area, all of the modern video systems, such as DVD, VCD and SuperVHS use PAL internally (for storing the data in the storage media, etc) and just change the color encoding to SECAM when outputting the signal back to SECAM TV.

Capture Information
Since SECAM is nearly identical to PAL, and in most cases even relies on signals generated from PAL video, you can refer to the entry for PAL to learn more about Video Capture.

Related Guides
Digital Video Fundamentals - Resolution and Aspect Ratio