⌘K
We use cookies to improve your experience
We use essential cookies to make our site work. With your consent, we may also use non-essential cookies to improve user experience.
Definition
Frame rate (measured in fps — frames per second) is the number of individual images displayed per second in a video. Common frame rates are 24fps (cinema), 30fps (standard video), and 60fps (smooth motion). Higher frame rates produce smoother motion but larger files.
Human vision perceives continuous motion from a sequence of still images displayed rapidly. At 24 fps, the standard for cinema since the 1920s, motion appears smooth with a characteristic film-like quality. Television adopted 30 fps (NTSC) and 25 fps (PAL) standards. Modern digital video commonly uses 30 or 60 fps, with gaming targeting 60-144+ fps.
Higher frame rates reduce motion blur and make fast movement appear sharper. This is especially noticeable in sports, gaming, and action sequences. The trade-off is proportionally larger file sizes — 60 fps video contains twice as many frames as 30 fps, roughly doubling the data before compression. Modern codecs mitigate this somewhat through inter-frame compression, but higher frame rates still mean larger files.
When converting or compressing video, reducing frame rate is one way to decrease file size. Dropping from 60 fps to 30 fps can save significant data with minimal perceptual quality loss for non-action content. For GIF creation, frame rates of 10-15 fps are common as a balance between animation smoothness and file size.