T0he South Texas Ghost Hunters Alliance
What are RODS?
The Ghost Education & Research Center in San Antonio, TX
tackled this phenomena and on July 4th, 2003 successfully broke the
mystery of What Are Rods?
The Answer: Flying Insects
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Using a Sony Digital Handycam (Model DCR-TRV740) Recording at Normal Speed, (Distance: 10', Zoom 5X, Frame: 4.0, 1/60 sec) Video Recording shows nothing out of the ordinary... Insects can be seen flying around our Bug Light. Observing the same insects on the Recorded Video, either in regular speed or slow motion, the NTSC format creates the same effect known as a ROD. We will break it down further for you below...
Explanation:
Almost all of modern camcorders use a filming format called NTSC. This fact is not debated. Understanding how the format works is what we are going to explain to you, and show you how the Rods are created using a filming format NTSC.
NTSC splices two pictures together to make one image.
If you snap a picture of an insect using a regular or digital camera, you will get the insect in flight.
If you film the same insect with a camcorder, you will get two frames put together of the insect. (Think of the Old Star Trek... when the enterprise goes into warp... the ship stretches... Same effect.)
It is common knowledge that when you pause a recorded image, you are looking at a image in a frame.
When people look at something they recorded on their Surveillance Camera or VCR, they usually pause it and watch it frame by frame.
(Like cool explosions or an action scene in a movie)
Well, One Frame on a Camera (Called A Picture) can be broken down into even smaller "Mini-Frames" (Pictures) called Fields.
There are 30 individual Fields in what we call a Block.
NTSC (The common filming format) crunches TWO blocks of 30 Fields together to give you a total of 60 individual Fields (Mini-Pictures).
(Which 30 + 30 = 60 Fields (or 2X30 Field Blocks) = One FRAME a.k.a. Image as seen on this page!)
When these "RODS" or flying insects are seen, they are the same insect pasted together to form what we call a ROD.
The image is stretched and the wing pattern of up and down form the perfect wave motion that each ROD has.
The Insect moving Two Frame Lengths (Since it's moving already in one 30 Field Block) Makes it "stretch" or "blur" as a streak, making the insect appear to be moving at incredible speeds. In fact, the actual speed of the insect is less than 40 MPH which is slow enough to even tell it's an insect but because these frames are interlaced (Pasted Together) it makes it look something paranormal.
IT ISN'T.