SECAM

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SECAM, also written SÉCAM (French pronunciation: [sekam], Séquentiel de couleur à mémoire, French for color sequential with memory), is an analog color television system that was used in France, Russia and some other countries or territories of Europe and Africa. It was one of three major analog color television standards, the others being PAL and NTSC. Like PAL, a SECAM picture is also made up of 625 interlaced lines and is displayed at a rate of 25 frames per second (except SECAM-M). However, due to the way SECAM processes color information, it is not compatible with the PAL video format standard. SECAM video is composite video; the luminance (luma, monochrome image) and chrominance (chroma, color applied to the monochrome image) are transmitted together as one signal.

All the countries using SECAM have either converted to Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), the new pan-European standard for digital television, or are currently in the process of conversion. SECAM remained a major standard into the 2000s.