On the game’s data
Impact freeze for the attacker: 15 frames
Impact freeze for the defender, first attack of a sequence or block string: 16 frames
Impact freeze for the defender, further attacks of a sequence or block string: 15 frames
Some curious fact is that jumps and specials take one less frame to be processed than normal attacks. If you press a button, 4 frames later you will see a normal, but if you move the stick up, it will come out 3 frames later.
When you recover from a normal attack, you can not attack right away. But by throwing, anyway. That is to say, at the first frame after a normal attack, you can throw, block or jump, but not walk or obtain specials. The next frame, normal and special attacks can also be used, but there is something about it, which is due to specials coming out before grounded normals, there is a chance the special will fail due to that frame where attacks do not work, and the next frame the game will try a normal. That is to say, if you enter the command for a special move, you will obtain the normal if you pressed a button, or nothing if you have used negative edge. However, if you try it one frame later, than the special will come out.
There are normals which present extra recovery: for such normals, the first frame after the animation completes is basically part of the recovery: the character does not move, can not obtain specials and can not block. The next frame is the same as above: the character can only jump, block or throw. Similarly, he can obtain normals and specials*(see paragraph above) at the next frame.
A number of Ryu’s normals present the extra recovery property, which is why he can not immediately attack after most crouching attacks. For instance, it may look like he could link most normals after a cr.short or jab, but he can only do cr.jab, cr.short or cr.short, cr.jab for 2-hit link combos. It is impossible to link, say, a crouching roundhouse after a non meaty crouching short or jab. This certainly happens for other characters, so if people can check them, we could get 100% accurate data on all normals of the game.
The recovery of special attacks is different. It depends on the special attack used. For examples, check my Ryu’s frame data post.