What is Frame Rate in Video?

If you’re new to videography, or you’re a photographer looking to get into videography, frame rate is definitely an essential element to understand right from the start. Aperture, shutter speed and ISO do still play a key role in filmmaking, but frame rate is really what helps your camera create a video - and the frame rate setting will directly affect how your video looks, and how you can edit it.

But first, what exactly is frame rate in video? Well, in order for your camera to create videos, it essentially needs to take a bunch of images, sequence them all together and play them back very quickly to create that motion. The amount of images your camera takes per second to produce a video is known as the frame rate.

So, if your camera is set to 30 frames per second (fps), it will take 30 images per second, and so on.

Now, you may be wondering which frame rate is best for video. It really is up to personal preference and / or what you’re trying to achieve with your shot. For sort of a standard scene, you’d generally film at 24 frames per second or 30 frames per second, but, for filming in slow motion, you’d generally want to be at 120 frames per second or above.

So, why do you generally want a higher frame rate for slow motion? Because, when you slow down a clip by, say, 50%, you’re actually removing 50% of the frames to achieve the slow motion effect. So, if you shoot a video at 30 fps, and then slow it down by 50%, you end up with 15 fps, which means you don’t have enough left over frames to create a smooth slow motion video. This is what causes a stuttering / choppy slow motion effect in some videos. When you shoot at 60 fps, 120 fps, or higher, you are left with way more frames when you reduce the speed by 50% (for example, 120 fps slowed down by 50% leaves you with 60 fps), producing a smooth (even mesmerizing) slow motion video.

Now, once you establish your frame rate and set your camera accordingly, you need to ensure your shutter speed is set correctly. The general rule of thumb is to set your shutter speed to double your frame rate. So, if you’re filming at 30 frames per second, you’d want your shutter speed to be 1/60.

And that’s what frame rate is in video. Once you’ve got your frame rate and shutter speed locked in, set your aperture and ISO, and you’re ready to rock.

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