Apple Final Cut Pro 5 - Manual (Page 1729)

378 Part V Appendixes
Recording and playback speed are usually the same, though they do not have to be.
For example, if you film a rubber ball bouncing on a sidewalk at 24 frames per second,
your movie will have 24 unique photographs of the position of the ball. However, if you
film at 100 frames per second, there are nearly four times as many photographs of the
ball’s position during the same period of time. The more frames per second, the more
precisely the exact position of the ball is documented.
Note: If you play back frames at a speed different than the original recording speed,
you can create temporal effects such as time lapse and slow motion.
Early television systems selected frame rates based on local electrical standards to
avoid electrical interference with the picture. NTSC in North America uses 30 fps (now
adjusted to 29.97 fps for color NTSC) based on 60 Hz electrical power. PAL, used
primarily in Europe, uses 25 fps based on 50 Hz electrical mains.
Because film cameras are relatively simple compared to video cameras, they allow
shooting and playing back with a wide range of frame rates (although the standard
projection speed is 24 fps). Video formats are much less flexible, partly because of their
electronic complexity and partly because a television is designed to play video at only
one frame rate. However, as video technology evolves, some digital camcorders now
offer several frame rate choices while maintaining compatibility with existing NTSC and
PAL video systems.
One second
60 fps
24 fps