Apple Final Cut Pro 5 - Manual (Page 1732)

Appendix B Frame Rate and Timecode 381
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Examples of How Different Frame Rates Are Used
Film is especially flexible in that it can be photographed and played back with a diverse
range of speeds. Some examples are:
 1 frame per hour: Extreme time lapse photography.
 1 frame per minute: Time lapse photography and stop motion animation.
 18 frames per second: Early motion picture films.
 24 frames per second: Worldwide standard for movie theater film projectors.
 48 frames per second: Slow motion photography (because it takes twice as long to
play back in a 24 fps projector, the motion is twice as slow).
 300+ frames per second: High speed cameras for very slow motion photography
(often used for miniatures to make models seem larger on screen).
 2500+ frames per second: Very high speed cameras for special effects such as
pyrotechnic photography and explosions.
Choosing a Frame Rate
Movies on film are almost exclusively projected at 24 fps. Television, however, does not
have an internationally accepted frame rate. In Europe and many other countries, PAL
and SECAM use 25 fps, while NTSC video in North America and Japan uses 29.97 fps.
Other common frame rates are usually multiples of these.
Note: Converting video formats from one frame rate to another is technically
challenging, and there are often unwanted visual side effects. This is especially true
when the frame rates do not evenly divide. For example, converting 30 fps to 60 fps is
fairly easy to do, but converting 29.97 fps to 25 fps is much more difficult. Making sure
audio stays in sync throughout the conversion is yet another challenge.