A laser pointer at 2B FPS [video]

Ah, two billion. The first several times I saw this it looked like "twenty eight", which didn't seem terribly interesting.

The video is definitely more interesting than 28 fps but it's also not really 2B fps.

It captures two billion pixels per second. Essentially he captures the same scene several times (presumably 921,600 times to form a full 720 picture), watching a single pixel at a time, and composite all the captures together for form frames.

I suppose that for entirely deterministic and repeatable scenes, where you also don't care too much about noise and if you have infinite time on your hands to capture 1ms of footage, then yes you can effectively visualize 2B frames per second! But not capture.

Others say that you're wrong, but I think you're describing it approximately perfectly.

As you say: It does capture two billion pixels per second. It does watch a single pixel at a time, 921,600 times. And these pixels [each individually recorded at 2B FPS] are ultimately used to create a composition that embodies a 1280x720 video.

That's all correct.

And your summary is also correct: It definitely does not really capture 2 billion frames per second.

Unless we're severely distorting the definition of a "video frame" to also include "one image in a series of images that can be as small as one pixel," then accomplishing 2B entire frames per second is madness with today's technology.

As stated at ~3:43 in the video: "Basically, if you want to record video at 2 billion frames per second, you pretty much can't. Not at any reasonable resolution, with any reasonably-accessible consumer technology, for any remotely reasonable price. Which is why setups like this kind of cheat."

You appear to be in complete agreement with AlphaPhoenix, the presenter of this very finely-produced video.

Quite right, he's doing 2B pixels per second @ 1x1, and effectively many minutes per 720p frame, using a rolling shutter.