This is why it is called "drop frame time code", but people leave off the "time code" part, adding to the confusion. And to add a little known fact about NTSC, the frame numbers dropped are always (if encoded properly) frames 0 and 1, as a pair. This is known as a super-frame, required to keep the color subcarrier in phase (for the math, there are 227.5 cycles of color subcarrier per line. 262.5 lines per field means each field is 59718.75 cycles long, or 270 degrees out from the previous. So it takes 4 fields, or 2 frames, to come back in phase.)