Talk:Frame rate

As I've noted in the discussion for the human eye article, there's no information there or in this article about the human eye's "frame rate" which, I have read to be about 60Hz or approximately 24 fps. This, I think is an important fact to include somewhere in these articles (as long as at least one of the articles supported it by a reliable reference). Additionally, this article could have a link to the article on aliasing (or simply the article on the wagon-wheel effect) as this information can help a person understand how the frame rate can affect the perceived motion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Andreas Toth (talk • contribs) 23:59, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Well when playing a PC game, I can definitely tell the difference between a game that is running at 24fps and 60fps. 212.139.18.21 (talk) 01:39, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I have read that the average human eye can see 60 fps, and experienced PC users can see up to 120 fps. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Metallica10 (talk • contribs) 00:31, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

"The human visual system does not see in terms of frames; it works with a continuous flow of light information." OK, I'm not an expert on human vision, but I do work for some, and I've just read that the human retina does indeed work in frames. So it looks like this needs and expert. So I'm adding the expert banner Anniepoo (talk) 03:45, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

The human retina does not work in frames. Different receptors respond at different rates. For example, Rod cells integrate light slowly and might not be able to resolve light that is flikering faster than about 12Hz, while cones can detect flicker up to at least 55Hz.^[1] I have added a reference to a Neuroscience textbook that discusses responses of light receptors.

AlexsandraSmart (talk) 16:13, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Well I don't know about "expert," but I'm a cognition and perception psych phd student, and I am definitely 100% sure that the eye does not have a framerate. Every single individual rod and cone light receptor fires as often as it can as long as it is receiving light in sufficient amounts. The rate is therefore biologically determined from a whole host of factors that are not controlled or standardized at all - how nutritious your meals have been recently, whether you have enough oxygen, how much light you are seeing now and just recently saw, the focus and aperture of your eye at the moment, the coloration of the light, blood supply to that one receptor cell, blah blah blah. Thus, every cell will be out of synchronization with every other cell. So it is the equivalent of rendering every pixel of your screen separately, at a fairly random (but adapted to what is needed to some extent) rate between about 1 millisecond (very stimulated) to 30ms (inactive). To further complicate matters, that does NOT mean 1000FPS and 30FPS, because neurons often transmit information in terms of firing RATE, so it might take many firings to signal "yes, I am active" to the bipolar cells they are attached to, not just one. AND lightness/brightness information is updated more slowly than color information, another reason it is totally different than a monitor. AND the information that is collected from the retina is NOT processed in one frame and then discarded, as FPS systems are. It is averaged over a long period of time, up to several seconds in a very dark room. AND line orientation and motion and color etc. are all processed at different stages and have different reaction rates, etc. The two systems are just totally not comparable at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.255.159.81 (talk) 15:10, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

PBS said, "Most feature films and many TV shows are shot on 35 mm film that has 64 holes per foot. There are 4 holes on each side of each frame."

Does this mean that a foot of film corresponds to one second of filming time, i.e., 16 frames per second? When they talk about shooting 300 feet of film, did they mean five minutes (300 = 5 * 60)? --Uncle Ed (talk) 13:56, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

That sounds about right to me. I gather that sound film runs at 90 feet per minute at 24 fps, or 18 inches per second. That incidentally gives the soundtrack a speed comparable to that of most professional reel to reel tapes (15 ips). Lee M (talk) 19:57, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, 35 mm film runs 18 inches per second at 24 fps. Binksternet (talk) 03:58, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there any way to watch an old movie, which was shot at 12 frames per second, on a modern computer? That is, I'd like to see the film at normal speed, so the action doesn't look sped up. --Uncle Ed (talk) 14:05, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Use gSpot or similar to change the fps entry in the header of the avi file and change it for audio accordingly. --Arnero (talk) 10:57, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Why are they no distinct points in the list? What happens if I play NTSC DVDs in my notebook? Theoretically some fields will be displayed twice? Looking at modern cameras, I see they use 59.94 fps. Do modern notebooks and Desktop LCDs also use this 59.94 fps and there are not troubles at all (I do not think so)? Can we state this explicitly in that point of the list? --Arnero (talk) 10:21, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

REPLY:

Black and white television is 30 FPS (60i) , The amount of chroma information is minimal , when color TV was introduced , the frame rate was lowered to add the color information. which incidental only updates every "frame" .

There are techniques to compensate for that slight discrepancy , try viewing something with mediaplayer classic , and press CTRL-P , you will see the compensation for it in real time in a graph at the bottom right corner of the screen. You will also see your screen's true refresh rate at the top right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.101.12.191 (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Wrong information!

with 30p or 60i caution should be used! they are not use for some of this frame rate combination on video/film industry! they do not mix and match flawless! some time use 59.94i or 29.97 instead. most prosumer cameras stead 24p but actual rate is 23.976p! or 60i but actual rate is 59.94i!

NTSC 59.94i<->29.97p (TV ok)

24p<->30p (not TV rate, jumpy panning on TV)

23.976p<->59.94i (TV rate)

60p or 60i (Not TV rate, jumpy panning on TV) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.179.159.88 (talk) 11:10, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

I updated the 300 fps section to remove the statement that BBC was investigating high frame rate broadcasts due to issues from viewers. The paper was done to investigate the quality of improved frame rate for sports broadcasts and roughly outlines the benefits and some tech hurdles. There is 1 line talking about standard 1080 video @ 60hz causing some people to complain about nausea that is irrelevant to 300 FPS.

"High-Definition television (by which we mean television with a vertical resolution of 720 or 1080 lines and a field or frame rate of 50/60Hz) has increased the spatial resolution without altering the frame rates used, however. Traditional television production techniques have been constrained by this change. For example, during camera pans to follow the action at sports events, HDTV trial viewers reported nausea as the static portion of the scene changed between sharp (when stationary) and smeared (when panning)"

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.197.129.128 (talk) 01:38, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't know why but when i watching some cartoons like Spongebob (season 1) Hey Arnold (season 1-3) etc i noted that some scenes are sped up twice and it really drives me insane it ruins the theatrical look and it looks like a more video game rather than a film or cartoon itself. Also on Youtube the Spongebob looked pretty choppy like missing frames (Spongebob's arms are not moving when he building a bubblestand) as there are many fast motions here and when it converted to 24 fps the sped up scenes look really choppy like when you watch spongebob with hypercam that had only 10 fps or a cartoon made by Cambria Studios from late 50s and 60s like Clutch Cargo, Space Angel, Captain Fathom which had choppy or no animation at all. It's too bad that YouTube can't play anything faster than 30 fps. 109.174.115.127 (talk) 08:27, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

See Soap opera effect. --2003:DA:CF11:CF77:9082:7795:7704:9A65 (talk) 21:50, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

The article currently states unter 'Video games', "Motion blur can also induce headaches when people play a game that requires concentration." The source is a single blog post about a single game, with a single commenting person expicitly agreeing. Does that suffice to make that rather strong claim about a health-related effect of a technique? --178.0.155.26 (talk) 07:41, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The Hobbit is not first film to be filmed at 48 fps. The first 48 fps film is Avatar (yup there's a 48 fps version of Avatar floating around the web). Hobbit is actually second. 109.174.115.63 (talk) 19:26, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Any source on this at all? I was unable to find anything on it (there are some news articles about the sequels being filmed in 48 fps though.) What you found floating around the web is probably interpolated footage from the original 24 fps. 71.213.147.249 (talk) 21:49, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

regarding the line "300 FPS can be converted to both 50 and 60 FPS transmission formats without major issues" would it be appropriate to add ", due in part to the fact that 300 is evenly divisible by both 50 and 60"? I'm just assuming that's the reason, not sure if it's correct. Jchap1590 (talk) 23:30, 17 July 2014 (UTC)

The article started with FPS in the lede, switched to fps half-way through, and after that switched back and forth in a seemingly random manner. I have changed fps to FPS thoughout, for consistency with the lede, but now I wonder whether it should have been FPS changed to fps throughout because a quick google search suggests fps is more common than FPS. Thoughts? Is there a standard abbreviation somewhere? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:30, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Following the standard rules of the language(s) and the common sense, the correct form is FPS, as it's an abbreviation, an initialism to be more precise. Written *fps, be it popular or not, it's incorrect, even when most of people don't seem to care. It would be f. p. s., but then again, it's easier and more popular to write FPS, just as AM or PM...

62.83.135.212 (talk) 00:35, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Contrary to the opening paragraph, frame rate is not the same thing as hertz on a progressive scan monitor. "REFRESH RATE" is hertz, not frame rate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refresh_rate

The refresh rate (most commonly the "vertical refresh rate", "vertical scan rate" for cathode ray tubes) is the number of times in a second that a display hardware updates its buffer. This is distinct from the measure of frame rate in that the refresh rate includes the repeated drawing of identical frames, while frame rate measures how often a video source can feed an entire frame of new data to a display. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dcsee1 (talk • contribs) 12:19, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

"In 2011, written on a forum was said that the retina takes about 5 to 12 milliseconds for an electrical impulse to fire and reset, 100 to 1000 rods depending on where in the retina you are, can fire every 7 milliseconds on average or around 140 fps.[11] Another website said that the human eye on average could see up to 150 fps."

I don't see how "a forum" and "a website" can count as reliable sources when people can write whatever they want on those without backing it up with evidence? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ytrearneindre (talk • contribs) 20:30, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

What the heck is "progrsssive" (p) ? Article suddenly jumps into this term and its nowhere explained. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.49.9.220 (talk) 23:06, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Progressive scan and Interlaced video respectively. GordinatorG (talk) 20:29, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

I have made some improvements, including adding the above wikilinks. ~Kvng (talk) 16:22, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

I know right for 48 in my opinion: 48 need 2:1 pulldown (1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2) (frame one = refresh one, frame two = two refreshes) But i don't know what's pull-down for PAL and SÉCAM refresh rate with NTSC framing rate and same issue from PAL and SÉCAM framerate with NTSC refresh rate... 2A01:E0A:AB0:C580:D1C4:271D:6CF0:560E (talk) 13:41, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

The article uses the term "deformable convolution" without defining it and without giving a simple explanation. Are interpolated frames similar to image-morphing transitions? Does using AI significantly improve the quality of interpolated frames? Are transformations from 29.97 fps (NTSC) to 25 or 30 fps usually done by adding a duplicate or dropping a frame roughly every half minute? Can people notice that? David Spector (talk) 15:02, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

it also refer to first person shooter games 64.125.177.174 (talk) 21:17, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

As the German equivalent of this article correctly states, the standard silent framerate was 16fps ever since the 1909 Paris congress of film manufacturers. Before that, the only film system using a higher framerate as a standard upon filming and playback was Edison's Kinetoscope peephole viewer (with various shorts running at either 30 or 40fps throughout their respective runtime), and in fact, many systems prior to 1909 used framerates below 16fps. The archived Brownlow article dating from 1980 used as a source here to claim that the standard framerate was higher by the 1920s already has multiple issues that make it obvious that it's far from a reliable source:

• Brownlow's article is self-contradictory when it comes to standard recording framerates. He gives one single anecdotal quote made decades later by a cameraman's son to claim that so-called 'overcranking' during filming was common at the time, and only shortly after, Brownslow contradicts himself by stating several times and in several ways that 16fps was still the definite standard at the time, such as that it can be told from the standard Bell & Howell camera equipment of the time, and uses other quotes relating to facts such as that at least up until the early or mid-1930s, professional silent-camera operators still calculated f-stop or aperture for 16fps, because that's what they were still shooting at for the standard filming speed.
• Brownlow erroneously points to examples of deliberate slo-mo and timelapse effects (whether in-camera or during projection, cf. cue cards) for particular shots or scenes to claim that there was "no standard framerate" during filming or that it was higher than 16fps, and to rare film experiments such as Anapolis (1928). Similar to this, many newer sources basically point to the experimental Napoleon (1927) by Abel Gance to claim the standard framerate was higher than 16fps, and by that logic, there not only was a "higher" standard framerate, but films of the time were also shot in Cinerama and Keller-Dorian natural lenticular color "as a standard", as those were other experimental features unique to Gance's Napoleon.
• Brownlow obviously lacks technical understanding of the contemporary Geneva drive inside cameras, as is obvious from numerous anecdotes in the article affirmative of the common erroneous myth that framerate would be determined by how fast the operator was cranking the handle. Movie cameras fundamentally relied upon Geneva drives translating naturally uneven and varying cranking motions into set consistent framerates, in order to maintain most basic exposure standards. Before early cameras adopted Geneva drives around c. 1900, films would flicker a lot in brightness throughout, because naturally uneven cranking speeds, no matter how miniscule the unevenness, would lead to significantly different amounts of exposure upon each frame. Up until c. 1900-1905, brightness flicker was also caused by early projection equipment, but then around c. 1905 they introduced 3-bladed shutters in order to minimize the duration of darkness between frames in projection. The fact that it were three shutter blades in silent-movie projectors from the start makes it evident that they were designed for 16fps playback, as 16fps * 3 shutters = 48 Hz, which meets the minimum requirement of the human eye's flicker fusion threshold of 48 Hz when it comes to the duration of darkness in-between frames (and in relation to the standard amount of image brightness inside a dark theater, as image brightness is also a factor when it comes to the minimum Hz required for flicker-free playback). When cinema progressed to talkies, the 3-bladed shutters in silents projectors were replaced by 2-bladed shutters in sound projectors, as 24fps * 2 shutters = 48 Hz. Also note that today, we are used to think of early movies prior to c. 1950 to flicker a lot, only because of cheap contact prints surviving of a particular film, and/or because of improper off-the-wall transfers made by simply pointing a video camera at the screen, where flicker occurs because the video camera is not in-sync with the projector. But in fact, movies didn't flicker anymore during projection once the shutter blade was introduced around c. 1905.
• Brownlow ignores the difference between filming speeds on the one hand and projection-speed fads on the other, in order to claim there was "no standard filming framerate" or that it was higher than 16fps, even though he also states that during the 1920s, greedy commercial theaters owners began to instruct their projectionists to playback the films faster so they could cram more showings into the same day and thus make more money from selling more tickets. This also shows in his article when he quotes moviegoers saying that they initially perceived talkies as "looking leaden-footed", which was simply due to the fact that talkies were shot at 24fps and also "PROJECTED* at that speed by technical necessity. This proves that by that time, audiences were used to silent films being projected at higher framerates than they had been shot at, all because of greedy theater owners trying to cramp more showings in a day. It could well be that the one cameraman's son quote about common 'overcranking' during filming above was simply due to a misunderstanding in relation to actually 'overcranked' *PROJECTION* like this. Brownslow himself relates the visible difference in speeds of movements between silent and talkie scenes seen in The Jazz Singer (1927), as the silent scenes were shot at the silent standard of 16fps and the talkie scenes were shot at the new talkie standard of 24fps, but the entire film was projected at 24fps as the new projection standard now.
• Brownlow draws his final conclusions from a faulty 1970s electronic slow-motion technology called "Polygon" to try and slow down tape playback after a telecine to tape had been done, in order to try and determine what the original filming framerate was. As this analogue video technique caused excessive tape-dropouts and interlacing flicker below a playback of c. 20-22fps (both because the video tape head was not fed enough information at such a low speed and all electronic monitors were reliant upon a higher framerate signal, and what they got at such a slow speed didn't meet their sync requirements; Bronwlow himself refers to those elctronic defects as "image drag"), he determines that the standard framerate of the 1920s must have been "somewhere between 20-26fps". For goodness' sake, by that quack method, he woulda gotten the same erronous results with Bioscop footage shot by the Skladanowsky brothers which is known, documented, and measured to have been shot at only 6-8fps!

Thus, I think Brownlow and his claim should either be removed from the article, or those numerous flaws in his article must be pointed out here by Wikipedia, namely in relation to the standard *SHOOTING* framerate. --2003:DA:CF11:CF77:9082:7795:7704:9A65 (talk) 18:09, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

In fact, on second thought (considering how once again, this is another case where falsehoods are picked up by many external sources simply because they were originally put on Wikipedia and have survived on there for a long time), maybe it should be made an FAQ on the very top of this talkpage, akin to Talk:Elon Musk/FAQ over at Talk:Elon Musk, pointing out the flaws and errors in Brownlow's 1980 article. --2003:DA:CF11:CF77:9082:7795:7704:9A65 (talk) 19:26, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

Throughout the article, the 'FPS' and 'Hz' are used, sometimes in comparison with one another, but the article never explains what 'Hz' is or how it compares. From context I'm guessing 'Hz' works out to something akin to 'frames per second' (as in the sentence 'analog television broadcast was developed with frame rates of 50 Hz'), but it would be very helpful for this to be spelled out. After all, the article tells us what 'FPS' is short for in the lede.

(I'm aware this is a matter of my ignorance rather than a problem with the article, but I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting clarification on this). 82.42.161.198 (talk) 21:05, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

There's a link for hertz very early on in the lead. --Zac67 (talk) 07:44, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Should we change all occurrences of Hz to FPS? I've reviewed and I don't immediately see any substitutions that wouldn't work. ~Kvng (talk) 00:47, 11 June 2025 (UTC)

Hz is typically used when describing refresh rate, i.e in the context of how quickly computer monitors and TVs can render an image. FPS is used to describe (audio)visual content and how many frames are shown per second. The two are related but separate. GordinatorG (talk) 20:30, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

The terms are not fully interchangable, at least not with the common meaning of FPS in camera specifications. The difference is when the exposure and the rest of the camera cycle functions in its cycle happen sequentially. FPS in that context is what the Hz (by the common meaning of Hz which is cycles per second) would be if the exposure time was zero, which never occurs. At the moment I didn't/don't have time to analyze the various occurrences of the terms in the article but would be happy to do so later. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:40, 2 September 2025 (UTC)

I've made a small improvement.

My earlier assessment indicated we could get by using FPS throughout, though it would be helpful to readers to explain the relationship. ~Kvng (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

That works for me. Binksternet (talk) 17:46, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Done ~Kvng (talk) 20:57, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Looks good. The specialized (different) meaning that I was discussing is covered in the article and not affected by your changes. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi everyone,  

I came across an online FPS testing tool that helps users measure frame rate in real-time.  

It’s free to use and provides live FPS analysis in the browser.  

Would it be useful to include it in the External links section for readers looking to test frame rates practically?  

I’d appreciate your thoughts before making any edits.  

~~~~ Mughal Hayan1 (talk) 02:12, 30 July 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Go ahead and add it and we'll see if anyone objects. ~Kvng (talk) 16:40, 1 August 2025 (UTC)