Normal people don't think much about the frame rate of what they watch, they just see a moving picture and get on with watching it. Not me. I'm acutely aware of the annoying judder and severe motion blur that comes from 24, 25 or 30fps video, which is everywhere unfortunately.
Motion looks pretty smooth at just 50fps, but artefacts can still be seen for fast motion and 60 is better still. Bump it up to 100, 120, 144 and beyond and motion takes on a very fluid look, reducing motion blur significantly. Weirdly, most people seem to dislike this improvement in temporal resolution and moan about the "soap opera effect" instead, hence lower than 50fps is still most commonly used, which irks me no end. Thankfully, modern TVs have motion interpolation to double the 25Hz (30 in America) framerate which goes a long way to fix this, but it definitely doesn't look as good as a true 50 or 60fps video and often shows brief artefacts with things in motion.
While TVs have a fix for this, I've never seen a computer monitor with this feature, so whenever I watch a low framerate video on YouTube, I have to put up with that annoying judder.
Here's an example: entertaining YT channel, Gary Eats, has shot all of his food review videos at 4K60 since the very first one in July 2023 which makes them look amazing with that fluid motion and excellent overall picture quality. However, for his surprise special video, the latest one at the time of writing, for some reason, the video has been shot at just 4K25 which really lets it down. It's still great content, but it's simply not presented as well as when at 60fps. I've linked to it below and the immediately preceding video so you can see for yourself. Note that your monitor's refresh rate should be an exact multiple of these framerates, or you'll see uneven judder artefects which make it even more annoying.
Note that 4K60 is a bit much for those stuck with low speed consumer internet connections typical of ADSL, leading to lots of buffering every few seconds leading to an unwatchable video, so the playback resolution can be reduced to 1440p and 1080p as required, still at the same framerate. Note that you can easily see the framerate of any YT video by right clicking it while it plays or is paused and selecting the bottom option, "Stats for nerds".
60fps video:
25fps video:
See how the 60fps one looks so much better?
The article below has a detailed explanation of the history of cinema, the various framerates used over time since the very early days of the 20th century and why the very low 24fps became the standard that most filmmakers seem to love because it looks "filmic".
There's some interesting example videos in it, too.
www.premiumbeat.com
en.wikipedia.org
Motion looks pretty smooth at just 50fps, but artefacts can still be seen for fast motion and 60 is better still. Bump it up to 100, 120, 144 and beyond and motion takes on a very fluid look, reducing motion blur significantly. Weirdly, most people seem to dislike this improvement in temporal resolution and moan about the "soap opera effect" instead, hence lower than 50fps is still most commonly used, which irks me no end. Thankfully, modern TVs have motion interpolation to double the 25Hz (30 in America) framerate which goes a long way to fix this, but it definitely doesn't look as good as a true 50 or 60fps video and often shows brief artefacts with things in motion.
While TVs have a fix for this, I've never seen a computer monitor with this feature, so whenever I watch a low framerate video on YouTube, I have to put up with that annoying judder.
Here's an example: entertaining YT channel, Gary Eats, has shot all of his food review videos at 4K60 since the very first one in July 2023 which makes them look amazing with that fluid motion and excellent overall picture quality. However, for his surprise special video, the latest one at the time of writing, for some reason, the video has been shot at just 4K25 which really lets it down. It's still great content, but it's simply not presented as well as when at 60fps. I've linked to it below and the immediately preceding video so you can see for yourself. Note that your monitor's refresh rate should be an exact multiple of these framerates, or you'll see uneven judder artefects which make it even more annoying.
Note that 4K60 is a bit much for those stuck with low speed consumer internet connections typical of ADSL, leading to lots of buffering every few seconds leading to an unwatchable video, so the playback resolution can be reduced to 1440p and 1080p as required, still at the same framerate. Note that you can easily see the framerate of any YT video by right clicking it while it plays or is paused and selecting the bottom option, "Stats for nerds".
60fps video:
25fps video:
See how the 60fps one looks so much better?
The article below has a detailed explanation of the history of cinema, the various framerates used over time since the very early days of the 20th century and why the very low 24fps became the standard that most filmmakers seem to love because it looks "filmic".
There's some interesting example videos in it, too.
The Surprisingly Fascinating World of Frame Rates
Let's take a closer look at a few different frame rates and how you can utilize them in your film and video projects.
www.premiumbeat.com
