What is frame rate?

Pictures per second, not seconds per picture

Video is a rapid sequence of still pictures, and the sense of motion is something the eye and brain assemble from them. The frame rate sets how many of those pictures arrive every second and therefore how finely movement is sampled. At 24 frames per second each picture stays on screen for about 42 milliseconds; at 60 it lasts under 17. Longer frames carry more natural motion blur, which is a large part of why 24 fps reads as cinematic, while shorter frames make fast motion look crisp and immediate. The HDTV parameters in the ITU's BT.709 recommendation cover this same family of picture rates, and YouTube accepts uploads at 24, 25, 30, 48, 50 and 60 frames per second, along with other rates.

How it is set and kept

Frame rate is fixed when footage is captured or when a project is created, and every later step has to respect it. Vimeo's compression guidance puts the rule in one line: keep the native frame rate and choose a constant frame rate. Converting between rates means inventing or discarding pictures. Going from 30 to 24 drops frames and can make motion stutter, while going from 24 to 60 either repeats frames, which adds nothing, or synthesises in between frames, which can smear edges. Several rates also exist in slightly slower broadcast versions, such as 23.98 and 29.97, inherited from television. Mixing 29.97 material into a 30 fps timeline shows up as an occasional repeated or dropped frame.

When it matters

It matters when motion is the content. A sports clip, a game capture or a fast product spin shows its difference at 60 fps, and a higher capture rate also leaves room for smooth slow motion. It matters when footage from different sources meets in one edit, since a phone clip at 60, a camera clip at 25 and graphics at 30 need a single target rate. It matters less for people talking, animated text and screenshots, where little moves quickly and 30 fps is already smooth. Higher rates cost data too. YouTube recommends 12 Mbps for a 1080p upload at 48 to 60 fps against 8 Mbps at 24 to 30, so doubling the rate for a video of slides and captions buys a bigger file and little else.

Common mistakes

Shooting at one rate and editing at another is the most common, and it stays invisible until motion looks jittery in the export. The second is choosing 60 fps for a moody brand film and then wondering why it looks like a live broadcast rather than a film. The third is editing a variable frame rate recording, which many phones and screen recorders produce, without first converting it to a constant rate, since the audio can slowly drift out of sync with the picture. The fourth is dropping 24 fps footage into a 30 fps export, where the conversion repeats frames in a regular pattern that makes slow camera pans judder. The fifth is changing the rate at the very end, after every timing decision was made.

Where it shows up in the product

Every template in the video builder here renders at 30 frames per second, and there is no frame rate setting, so landscape, vertical, 1080p and 4K exports all come out at 30. For the kind of video it makes, with animated text, charts, screenshots and generated scenes, that is a comfortable rate: motion looks smooth and file sizes stay moderate. The case to plan for is your own footage. An uploaded MP4, WebM or MOV clip plays inside a video that renders at 30 fps, so footage shot at 24 or 60 fps still ends up in a 30 fps file. When motion in the clip matters, convert it to 30 fps with a proper editor before uploading and keep the original for other uses. The presentation recorder in the slides module also records at 30 fps.

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