My goal in this article is to discuss the challenges in converting frame rates.
If everything you shoot, edit and output is a single frame rate, then don’t change anything. This is the ideal way to work. However, as you start to integrate elements that originate at different frame rates, frame rate conversion rears its very ugly head.
DEFINITIONS
Think of a video clip as a series of wooden children’s blocks connected by a piece of string. Each block represents a frame of video. As we pull the string, tugging the blocks along in a line, the frame “rate” represents the number of blocks (or images or frames) that pass an observer each second. Frame rate is measured in frames per second; “fps.”
Changing the speed of a clip is NOT the same as changing the frame rate.
This difference is significant. The first is easy, the second is hard.
We change the speed of a clip to create a visual effect. We change the frame rate of a clip to match the settings of our clip to the project. If you don’t need to match settings, don’t mess with changing frame rates.
SETTING BOUNDARIES
There are two sides to a frame rate discussion:
There is a lot of debate as to which is the “best” frame rate. Some feel that 24 fps is more “cinematic,” while 60 fps is more “real.” As you should know by now, there is no “best.” Just as there is no “best” car, camera, or restaurant; there are simply choices.
Converting to a 24 fps frame rate will NOT make your movie look “filmic.” It will, generally, just make it look worse. The “cinematic look” is a combination of: lenses, lighting, depth of field, shutter speed, shutter angle, motion blur and frame rate. Changing the frame rate only affects the frame rate, not the look.
There are no right answers, just louder voices.
Also, to keep this article to a manageable length, I will ignore:
These special cases don’t alter the basic rules of frame rates, though they can complicate understanding.
THE BASIC RULES
Whether you use Adobe, Apple, Avid, or any other video editing software on Macs, PCs or mobile devices, the basic rules of frame rates remain the same:
HOW WE GOT TO TODAY
In the early days of film, say 1890 – 1915, all cameras were hand-cranked. During this time, frame rates wandered from 8 fps to 30 fps, often in the same scene. In those days, the value of a camera operator was not based on their composition skills, but on the consistency of their cranking.
NOTE: This is one of the reasons comedies were so prevalent in the early days of film. Speed changes are inherently comedic and physical comedy does not require dialog.
As films grew in popularity and profitability, standards developed allowing cameras to be cranked by a motor, rather than by hand. Also, at this time, the industry settled on a frame rate of 18 fps.
Why? Because film was expensive and producers were, um, cheap. 18 fps provided the illusion of smooth movement without wasting a lot of film and money.
This standard continued up until the advent of talkies, which exploded on the scene in 1927 with The Jazz Singer. The problem was that 18 fps was not fast enough to support high quality audio. This frame rate yielded audio roughly equivalent to a telephone call.
So, a new frame rate standard needed to be developed – and the industry chose 24 fps.
Why? Because film was expensive and producers were still, um, cheap. 24 fps provided the illusion of smooth movement with relatively high-quality sound without wasting a lot of film, and money.
NOTE: Sound quality continued to improve over time, not by increasing the frame rate, but by shifting audio from an optical track to a magnetic track.
When video arrived, in the 1930’s, we had a major timing problem. How to get the TV receiver to “pulse” in sync with the transmitter? The solution was AC power. All across the US, power “pulsed” at 60 cycles per second.
Television engineers adopted this “universal” pulse as the basic timing circuit for video. Since video in those days was interlaced, where a single frame (complete image) was composed of two fields (a portion of the image consisting of all the odd or even scan lines), each field pulsed at 1/60th of a second.
Ta-dah! 30 fps video.
Except, over time it was discovered that high-voltage electricity “evaporated” from transmission lines when the cycle rate was too high. 50 cycles preserved more power over distance than 60 cycles (now called Hz). So, when much of the world was rebuilt after World War II, the utility companies, to save money and power, dropped the cycle rate to 50 Hz.
From there, the video industry derived 25 fps video, because interlacing was still in vogue.
So, at the dawn of the HD era in the early 1990’s, we had three principle frame rates: 24, 25, and 30 (which, with the advent of color was slightly modified to 29.97 fps, because why should this story be particularly simple?)
And, as we all know, with the rise of HD, our industry came together as a group and standardized on a single frame size and single frame rate.
– – –
Sigh… No such luck.
At last count, we now have nine different frame rates: 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 48, 50, 59.94 and 60. (And, yes, 100 and 120 fps are knocking on the door. Please keep that door shut…!)
No WONDER we’re all confused. We’ve been handed a veritable Gordian Knot of frame rates!
CONVERSION OPTIONS
Frame rate conversion is the process of duplicating or removing frames such that, when the clip is played in a sequence that matches the frame rate of the clip, all action appears at “normal” speed. (I put “normal” in quotes because I couldn’t figure out an easy or good way to define normal.)
Most of the time, video editing software will automatically handle frame rate conversions. And, most of the time, I suggest you not worry about it, because, most of the time, it will look fine.
REMEMBER: “Camera-native frame rates always look better than converted frame rates.”
When it comes to frame rate conversions, there are easy options and hard options. Following the wooden block analogy I introduced earlier, we can’t just stretch frames to different rates because each frame is made of wood, not Silly Putty. Instead, we change frame rates by inserting or removing entire blocks.
EASY: 50 fps to 25 fps – or 60 fps to 30 fps
Assuming the video is progressive, conversion simply deletes every other frame.
If the video is interlaced, one field is deleted while the scan lines in the other field are duplicated. (Yes, this option reduces image quality. That’s one reason I hate interlaced video.)
EASY: 29.97 fps to 59.94 fps – or 25 fps to 50 fps.
Here every frame is duplicated. This does not create slo-mo because the video plays back at 50 fps, yielding the same movement as playing 25 fps video in a 25 fps project.
This does not significantly degrade movement quality, but movement will look more fluid if you shot 50 fps (or 60) originally.
MOSTLY EASY: 24 fps to 25 fps
The traditional way of converting 24 fps to 25 fps is increasing the speed of the 24 fps material 4%. This allows all frames to be displayed and, while the action is a bit faster, it isn’t so much faster that the audience will perceive it.
NOTE: Yes, this speed change means we need to speed the audio as well. There’s no free lunch.
HARD: 24 fps to 29.97 fps
This was done traditionally when converting films for television broadcast using a telecine.
Here, we need to create, essentially, six “new” frames every second. (The difference between 24 fps and 30 fps.) But we are dealing with children’s blocks here, we can’t create new images, we can only create new frames that contain existing images.
There are several ways to do this, depending upon whether you are working with interlaced or progressive images. The interlaced methods are quite complex and involve duplicating specific fields, not just frames.
But, here’s a simple method to illustrate the process. Take a group of four frames, then duplicate the last frame in the group. Over 24 frames this creates 6 new frames.
When played back at 30 frames a second, most viewers won’t notice the duplicated frame. However, for the discerning, your action will slightly stutter every five frames. This illustrates why you want to avoid converting frame rates.
HARD: 60 fps to 24 fps
Three quick reminders:
NOTE: Optical flow seeks to do just that, invent new frames. However, while good in theory, the results are often worse than not using optical flow.
Here’s an example of how this could be handled: We need to remove 36 frames from every second of video. Since both 60 and 24 are divisible by 3, we can divide each second into three “blocks,” or sections. This means that a 20 frame block in the source clip needs to be converted into an 8 frame block in the destination clip. To do this:
As you can see, asymmetrical trimming (remove 1 frame, then remove 2, then remove 1…) gets us to the frame rate we need, but at the expense of potentially adding jitter to movement; say during an actor’s walk or as a car drives through a scene. Whenever we convert frame rates asymmetrically, we run the risk of damaging the movement in the clip.
A SIDEBAR ON VIDEO COMPRESSION
Video can be compressed in one of two ways:
I-frame formats include: ProRes, GoPro Cineform, AVC-Intra and the DNx family of codecs.
GOP formats include: AVCHD, H.264, HDV and most formats that generate very small file sizes.
As I was writing this article, it occurred to me that camera-native GOP-format video will probably suffer more from image degradation as you change frame rates than video that was shot as I-frame media.
I haven’t tested this, and would like to hear other opinions, but if you are seeing blurry images when changing frame rates by small increments, I would suspect your video format is too blame.
SUMMARY
Frame rates are complex. However, a little planning ahead can simplify headaches. The best option – always – is to shoot the frame rate you need to output.
And, keep in mind, that a “film-like look” does not necessarily require a “film-like frame rate.”
94 Responses to Frame Rates are Tricky Beasts
← Older Comments Newer Comments →Thanks Larry. I was going to edit a documentary that has drone and GoPro shot at 60fps. Am glad I researched frame rates before I shot the interviews at my usual 24fps. Luckily I saw your article and shoot the interview at 30fps, and did the edit at 30fps. Would have ruined the beautiful drone and GoPro footage if I had tried to use them in a 24fps timeline.
Hi Larry,
Excellently written and informative article! I have a question about to 59.94 to 29.97 frame conversions.
I have 100+ hours of footage which cannot be reshot and I’m trying to give my footage a more “cinematic feel”. However, when I drop my 59.94 footage into a 29.97 timeline OR export my 59.94 footage from a 59.94 timeline as 29.97, it’s a little jumpy. I’m assuming this is due to the shutter speed at 59.94 being higher and not providing enough motion blur (oh, the beauty of hindsight).
Can this be corrected by using plugins or a particular blending option? I’m using PPCC. I’m contemplating just editing the footage in 59.94 so then at least it looks smooth, even if not as “cinematic” as it could be.
Cheers
Andrew:
Changing the frame rate AFTER shooting won’t make your images look any more “cinematic.” The benefit of shooting, say, 24 fps is the motion blur effect it creates as each frame is recorded. Changing the frame rate later won’t change the look or motion blur of each frame.
So, edit at the frame rate you shot. Spend your time color grading – that will do more to help the look than changing the frame rate.
Larry
Hi Larry
Always look to you for advice but this article fails to answer a niggling question I have. You say that converting 24fps to 25 FPS means increasing speed by 4%. How did you get that figure mathematically? I ask because I need to work out a conundrum myself. I have soy some 16mm film at 16fps. I know when it gets scanned that the QuickTime will be 25fps and I’ll edit it on a 25fps timeline but it will run too quick. I know I will have to reduce the speed but by how much? Please tell me the mathematical way of working it out.
Yours expectantly
Richard, London
Richard:
The formula is: 1-(the frame rate you have now / the frame rate you want).
So, 1-(24/25) = +4% (speed the 24 fps clip by 4%)
Again, 1-(25/16) = 56.25% (slow the 25 fps clip by 56.25% (or, more practically, 56%)
Larry
Hi all,
last holidays i did a big mistake not ensuring, that also my new camera devices (drone and dashcam) have the same capture frames rates as my main video cam.
I know: this mistake is an absolutly no go for experienced camera operators 🙂
So I had to deal with 29.97 FPS footage and 50.00 FPS footage in same video projects.
I worked for weeks very hard in order to find the best solution to keep smooth camera pans and generally prevent jerky/choppy results after export.
I tried it with nearlly every video editing solution/software.actual available on the market. Also I used Google a lot in order to get some tips.
Again and I again: mostly I had very big jutter in the videos after export.
The best results in comparison I had with Adobe Premiere or Adobe Media Encoder in using the optical flow option. The results came very near to my expectations.
The problem with optical flow is, that it reduces the total sharpness in some scences, Increase sharpness causes sometimes artifacts. Also I recognized in some clips micro jutter.
Again: Adobe makes the best job in changing frames rates. All other video editing software solutions I tested created very choppy jutter video results.
By pure coincidence I found last days the best solution.
On my Ipad (Pro) I use in holidays/on trips the LumaTouch app. This app can also export H264 and H265 with very high bit rates.
So lossless export of original footage is guaranteed.
I tested the last days a lot of clips
– converting 50 FPS to 29.97 FPS
– converting 29.97 FPS to 50 FPS
SURPRISE!
Whatever I convert from one FPS to another FPS: the results are absolutly smooth without losing sharpness.
So I do now my post production unusually on my Ipad with Lumatouch, before editing in Adobe.
I know, that this solutions seems on the first view a very unusual solution. BUT, it works 🙂
I am working on an AE video tutorial. Searching for sharp and clear text about the classic issues I have found this web page. Simple as it could be.
Glad to found it! I have made a short documentation about this in my video course and your credits are there, of course.
Greetings from Romania!
Hi Larry, I have a film that has been shot and edited in 60fps but I need it to be in 24fps to suit playing on the cinema screen. Is there any way I can go about making my video still look reasonably good and not looking choppy?
Jayelle:
I would finish your project at 60 fps, export a 60 fps master file, then convert it to 24 fps.
Try different software for the conversion – each uses a different conversion algorithm, pick the one that looks the best. Or, even better, pay a post house to convert it using high-end hardware.
Larry
Hi Larry, great article. I have footage that is shot and comped at 23.976 but is required for broadcast at 59.94p. Would a conversion pipeline look like this?
Create master file at 23.976.
Import into After Effects and drop that into a 59.94 comp.
Render and let after effects choose the conversion algorithm.
Laurie:
That’s one way. Another is to drop the movie into a 59.94 timeline in Premiere. MAKE SURE!!! however, whether they want 59.94 PROGRESSIVE or INTERLACED. Most broadcasters are using interlaced at that frame rate.
Larry
Thanks Larry.
I’ll look into both options and see which gives the best results. I doubled checked with the client and they definitely want 59.94 progressive which confused me at first as I’ve only come across 59.94 interlaced for broadcast before!
How can we get hour 1 to land on “A” frame is it’s 59.94? I chose to do 00:58:58:56, and that didn’t seem to do it…
What’s the math for that?
Jay:
I don’t understand your question – would you try again?
Larry
Sorry, I just re-read that. Terrible.
I’m working on a broadcast show in Davinci Resolve 15.1 that needs to be converted from 23.98p to 59.94p as well. I’m noticing the file is not starting on “A” frame when it reaches Hour 1 (01:00:00:00). so I know the 3:2 is incorrect.
I started my timeline at 00:58:59:56 is that the correct math, or is it the program i’m using?
Jay:
“A” frames are only relevant when creating interlaced media. You wrote that you were converting 23.96p into 59.94p. The “p” stands for “progressive,” which doesn’t have interlacing or “A” frames.
In interfacing, an “A” frame is created at the start of every second, so as long as your project starts on an even second: 1:00:00:00 or 00:00:00:00 or any timecode ending in :00 – you’ll be starting on an “A” frame – BUT this is only relevant when creating interlaced media.
Larry
Sorry. I miss spoke. I meant I’m not getting the proper Pulldown that a HDSR machine usually gets when capturing tape to file. Maybe it’s not possible. Thanks for your help!
Hi, any idea how to use Media Encoder, Premiere, or After Effects to do a reverse telecine? My footage was shot on 23.976i LFF on a DVX100, and was delivered for broadcast at 29.976i over 10 years ago. Now we are looking to upscale the master from SD to HD (using a Red Giant extension in Premiere) and re-release. I can’t help but think that the film will look better in its original frame rate. It’s painful to think about starting from scratch with all the raw footage to rebuild a timeline (not to mention a new color correct) and wondered if there’s a way to simply drop the extra frames from the 29.976i master once the master tape is digitized in a new project. Thanks for any advice.
Eric:
To the best of my knowledge, Media Encoder does not support reverse telecine.
Apple Compressor does, as do others. There’s also a free app, called JES Deinterlacer that may also work. Here’s a blog, from AbleCine, that illustrates both:
https://www.abelcine.com/articles/blog-and-knowledge/tutorials-and-guides/simple-workflow-for-removing-23-pull-down
Larry
thanks for this! always Love your knowledge. I’m stuck. Im using FCPX. I shot in 23.98 mostly except some b roll. I exported my film by mistake using a 29.97 project then gave it to a colorist and audio engineer. Unfortunately. I didn’t know. Wish I had. So I’m backtracking.I am returning to the timeline that I gave the colorist and cutting all the media and putting it into a new timeline of 23.98. The new timeline is now about 24 seconds longer than in the 29.97 project file. The film is 77 minutes in 29.97 and it’s 77 and about 25 seconds in 23.98.
does this discrepancy seem right? also worried about some ‘optical flow’? thanks a lot!
Cybil:
Oh, dear…! THIS is a mess.
Exporting a 23.98 fps project to a 29.97 movie adds frames; 6 every second. Essentially, the process inserts a new frame every five frames.
Importing a 29.97 movie back into a 23.98 timeline does NOT drop frames. Instead, it makes the movie longer – by those same 6 frames every second. This is what’s causing the duration discrepancy.
There’s no easy way to cut this back because the audio is timed to the new duration.
Larry
Good Day Larry,
I have a question not tackled above. This is about Frame rate conversion from 29.97fps to 25 fps. After the frame rate conversion, there are evident jitter and ghosting issues in the output video. Do you have a solution for this? Thanks in advance.
Carlo:
Sadly, this is one of the BIG issues with converting frame rates. I have two suggestions:
1. Try using different software to convert the frame rate
2. Try using hardware specifically designed for frame rate conversion – this may involve renting gear.
Converting frame rates after the fact is never easy and rarely works well.
Larry