In this post, we’ll go over what frames per second (FPS) is. This is a concept easier understood by watching the video above but it’s still fairly easy to grasp by reading below.
In the world of film and video editing frames per second will sometimes be noted as FPS. No, not a first-person shooter game (also sometimes referred to as FPS).
Focusing on camera recording and video playback first, frames per second (FPS) is how many images are recorded per second. Any video recorded is actually multiple images captured per second and played back per second. For example, in Hollywood movies and TV shows, it’s very common for cameras to record in 24fps and playback in 24fps. This means the camera is capturing 24 images person second and playing back 24 images per second.
Since video playback at 24fps is so fast, the human eye and brain will view it as a moving video.
If you’ve ever watched a high fps video played such as The Hobbit (Peter Jackson recorded the movie in high fps and released a version that was played back at 48fps) or Gemini Man (Ang Lee recorded and released a 120fps version but technically no theatre in North America had a projector that could playback 120fps), the experience would be “unique” for many people.
When Peter Jackson and Ang Lee released the high fps versions of their movies, they were trying to make the video playback and motion look more realistic. Why? Because the standard 24fps movie playback is slow. Yes, you read that right. 24fps, which is Hollywood (and most movie studio’s standard worldwide) is actually a very old filming standard. Many directors refuse to play their movies back beyond 30fps (sometimes they’ll release a movie at 30fps) because it would ruin the “cinematic feel”. Cinematic feel is just a term used to stick with an old 24 or 30fps standard.
If you’ve ever watched a video at 60fps with some basic movement (for example, not someone just sitting in an interview), the video playback will look “too smooth” and will even look like the video is playing back in fast forward mode. The reality is not that 60fps is playing back faster, it’s just that we’re so used to the old 24fps (or 30fps standard), that 60fps will look “too fast”.
Interestingly, testing with myself, friends, and family, if you watch a 60fps video for several minutes, you’ll get used to it and appreciate the smooth video. When you switch back to 24fps, the video will look a bit choppy.
One more advantage to recording in 60fps is for video editors to play the video back in slow motion. The more frames captured per second, the more you can slow down a video clip before it becomes choppy. For instance, if you have two video clips of the same length, one recorded in 24fps and another in 60fps. Then you slow video playback down by 50%, the 60fps video will look a lot smoother.
It’s unfortunate that the TV and movie industry still use 24fps as the main film standard (sometimes 30fps) because it’s just inferior to 60fps and a very old way of thinking, but that’s just the case.
