From the course: Video Production and Post Tips

The impact of frame rate

From the course: Video Production and Post Tips

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The impact of frame rate

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- Hi, my name's Rich Harrington. - I'm Robbie Carman. - And this week we are talking about frame rates. Now, frame rates are one of those things that have technical benefits. They can be used for aesthetic choices. I think folks kind of struggle with the overall, what's the right frame rate? Especially now since cameras have so many choices. - Yeah, that's true, Rich, and I mean, frame rate sometimes is determined for you. For example, if you're doing a broadcast show, most likely you're going to have to deliver, here in the States anyway, 29.97. In PAL land, that would be 25. There are compelling technical and creative reasons to shoot other frame rates. For example, 24 frames, or 23.98, which is the fractional value that's compatible with other frame rates, is very popular for getting that film-type look, but you might also shoot at a higher frame rate for things like improved motion. We've seen over the past couple years major feature films shooting in 48 frames per second, which is double the standard film frame rate. Then, of course, we've seen extreme frame rates used, primarily for high-speed photography, if you want to get that slow-mo effect. You know, 1,000 frames a second. - Well, and a lot of these changes in frame rates have been driven by the move from more mechanical acquisition to digital acquisition. You know, back in the day, if this was a physical film camera, or let's say we were shooting traditional film- - Couldn't move the film that fast. - Yeah, you couldn't pull it through that fast, but now that we can, a whole new world opens up. So there are a lot of different ways that frame rate is going to impact the look of your footage. We're going to talk about those in depth, but let me tell you my favorite one. For me, I use frame rate as the greatest control over the quality of the image that I'm capturing. So if I'm capturing something that has a lot of motion, high speed, I tend to favor higher frame rates. I really enjoy that flexibility, and it comes in handy. On the other hand, if I'm trying to conserve space, or I'm going for something with more of a blur, fluid feel, I'm going to favor a slower frame rate. But sometimes, Rob, these are not our choices. These are choices made...You do work for a network. They say, "This is the frame rate." - Yeah, that's right, and I would add one more thing to the idea of why you should shoot at a certain frame rate. Especially when it comes to slower frame rates, you know, 23.98, 24, there's this concept, I'm going to get a little geeky on you for a second, of persistence of vision, right? At a certain point, we can sort of detect individual frames that are being played back, and through the years, if you think about, like, films that were made in the early 1900s and 1920s, you kind of get that staccato kind of thing. It's because they were playing back at, like, 15 frames a second, and our brain kind of goes, "Oh, I can start to detect those individual frames." When we kind of got up to 24 frames a second, that was just enough to kind of perceive a nice, fluid motion, how we see the world. From there, going up to 25, 29.97, 30, and 48, and 60, those more frames are going to kind of give you more of a hyper-real look. - Well, and I think that this is changing, too, because there have been some technological impacts that are driving consumer behavior. For example, as displays have gotten better, it's a way for displays and manufacturers to stand out, with higher frame rates. And, we've got to admit, the video game industry, which is focused on frame rate, and faster frame rate, and performance, has trained an entire generation to expect certain types of imagery to be really high frame rate. - Yeah, again, I would go into sort of the hyper-real thing. As we generally go up to more, faster and faster frame rates, and we're watching them at those native speeds, watching them at 60, 120, or 240, I mean, it gets hyper, hyper-real, and kind of looks weird. So from aesthetic reasons, I generally think about frame rates as, when I want something to look more real than real, I want the most fluid motion possible with the least amount of motion blur, I'm bumping up in my frame rate. If I want something that has kind of that aesthetic, classic look, you know, 23, 24, those kind of frame rates are going to give me that traditional, nice, kind of softer motion, a little bit more film-y. - Now, we're going to explore these more in depth, but there is one small technical limitation I want to point out. You're probably watching us on the Internet, and this video platform that you're consuming on can only deliver one type of frame rate to you. But if you do some searching, and we're going to post some other clips that you can take a look at, you're going to notice that there are different ways for frame rates to play back, and the best way to see this is to experiment with your own camera, and then watch the footage play back.

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