What Frame Rate Should You Film In for Sports Videos?

what frame rate should you film out making sports videos if you've always wondered the answer to that question then you're going to love this video hey what's going on my name is peter sorellis i'm a videographer and editor from toronto canada i specialize in sports videography and today we're going to be talking about frame rates and their respective shutter speeds for use in sports videos this video is going to be going over all the popular frame rates available to you when recording sports videos discussing the pros and cons to each of them specifically pertaining to sports videography and by the end of this video you should have a good idea of what frame rates you should be filming at and what respective shutter speeds you should be using in different situations that you might find yourself in as a sports videographer firstly i want to start by saying that there's no one specific frame rate and respective shutter speed that you're going to be able to use 100 of the time different types of content are going to require you to film in different frame rates and use different techniques with your camera so just because i might film something a certain way for the content that i produce doesn't mean that you using the same settings on your camera or filming in the same frame rate is gonna work for the content that you're looking to produce so this is going to be from my perspective and offering my insights from the content that i make but take everything that i say here with a little grain of salt and try to apply the knowledge that is provided here to your specific situation anyway let's get into our first frame rate which is 24 frames per second so 24 frames per second is typically used in movies this is the cinematic frame rate people in hollywood are filming their movies and putting them out in 24 or 23.976 if you want to get specific frames per second when you film at 24 frames per second with a 180 degree shutter angle which is the natural shutter angle that you would typically use this will result in a 1 over 50 shutter speed on your camera and this is what humans perceive as natural motion blur when i wave my hand in front of my face like this it's not fully clear my hand is kind of blurry that is the look that a one over 50 shutter speed which you will use typically at 24 frames per second will replicate if you want you can use 24 frames per second for pre-game or postgame maybe during a timeout if you're filming a coach giving a speech or something and i think this is really good because 24 frames per second will usually result in a higher quality image than if you're filming at a much higher frame rate and this is because there's more data being put into each individual frame since there's less frames taking up the same amount of time and video and also in a lot of cameras including the a7 3 that i shoot on the highest possible resolution that that camera can offer is only available in lower frame rates like 24 frames per second and 30 frames per second and if you want to shoot at a higher frame rate you have to downgrade your resolution now for action i don't like shooting in 24 frames per second with a 180 degree shutter angle i think that there's too much blur and you can't really make out your subject so i don't think it's great for that if i ever have to film action at a lower frame rate i usually overcrank but we'll get into over cranking later in this video the next frame rate that i want to talk about 30 frames per second so 30 frames per second has a lot of very similar use cases to 24 frames per second you're going to be using it in a lot of the same scenarios but the big difference between 24 frames per second and 30 frames per second is that for broadcast television most things especially sporting events are being shown in 30 frames per second so if you're filming and the content that you're filming is being used on a broadcast or if you think that the content you produce from what you're creating might be used in a broadcast later then you're probably going to want to film in 30 frames per second because if the rest of the broadcast is being produced in 30 frames per second you're going to need that frame rate to match with the content that you're filming additionally for what it's worth if you're filming in 30 frames per second and then placing that footage onto a 24 frames per second timeline you can slow your footage down to 80 of its original speed which isn't much i definitely wouldn't call it slow motion but if you have to stretch a clip out by a few extra frames and you don't want to start dropping frames then it can help so it's something and also if you're filming at a 180 degree shutter angle at 30 frames per second you're not really gonna notice the difference in motion blur versus if you're filming in 24 frames per second there's very few eyes in the world who could pick out the difference in motion blur between a 1 over 50 shutter speed and a 1 over 60 shutter speed so you'll still get realistic looking motion blur if you're filming at 30 frames per second so 60 frames per second is the first frame rate that people consider to be slow motion you can slow your clip down to 40 of its original speed when placing the clip on a 24 frames per second timeline and at a 180 degree shutter angle you'll have a shutter speed of 1 over 120 or 1 over 125 i suppose if you're using a conventional camera for photography that gives you a shutter speed and this is going to create a lot less motion blur in your image so your subject is going to be a little more clear when they're doing quick actions which i think is important when you're filming sports because people are moving up and down the court very quickly and you want to make sure that your subjects can be seen also a lot of cameras 60 frames per second is the highest frame rate that you can film to this is very true for entry level and beginner cameras if you're just starting on sports videography you might find that this is the case for your camera i know when i started my first camera only filmed up to a maximum of 60 frames per second and although there is slow motion that is slower than this i don't think that 60 frames per second being the fastest frame rate you can film it is prohibitive it's certainly passable you can use it in your videos and i don't see any reason why you can't tell a good story filming in 60 frames per second and lower so 60 frames per second a lot of the time can be a really ideal frame rate for sports videography because it gives you options but you're not losing too much quality the file sizes aren't going to be huge and you have the option of slowing down important clips when you want to 120 frames per second is a super popular frame rate for sports videographers i personally film in 120 frames per second 90 of the time when i'm creating sports videos also with 180 degree shutter angle your shutter speed will be one over 250 when filming in 120 frames per second and this is enough to start really reducing the amount of motion blur in your image to give you that cool jittery effect that you see when you are watching videos on instagram for example if you if you ever see those clips on instagram where it looks like you're just watching a series of photos but it's actually a video and they're happening very quickly it's likely because someone cranked their shutter speed really high to something like 1 over 250 or even higher and this is how they get that look that's become so popular 120 frames per second though it is important to realize that the quality of each frame isn't going to be as good as if you were filming at a lower frame rate because the information that you're recording is being spread over more frames so you'll find that each frame might not look quite as sharp as it would if you're filming in 24 frames per second to kind of demonstrate a practical example of this i'll use the camera that i use all the time the a7 iii if i'm recording in 1080p 120 frames per second i'm gonna get 100 megabits per second if i spread those hundred megabits out to all the frames that i'm getting that's 100 megabits per second for 120 frames per second which works out to i wrote it down i'm not doing this mental map which works out to 0.83 megabits per frame whereas if i'm filming in 4k 24 frames per second on the same camera i'm also getting 100 megabits per second so each frame is gonna get over four megabits per second 4.167 megabits to be exact per frame if i'm filming in 4k 24 so you're gonna find that each 4k image filmed in 24 frames per second is gonna be sharper and higher quality than each individual frame filmed in 120 frames per second because there's just so much more information in the 24 frame per second recording but this goes back to having to understand what you're filming for if you're gonna need slow motion to make your video look really cool and put emphasis on like a crazy dunk that happens during the game then you're going to want to be recording in 120 frames per second so you have that slow motion option because you don't know when the play that you need to slow down is going to happen if you're filming a sporting event but you want to make sure that when it does happen you've got it in the frame rate that you need to use it in your edit and make it look cool so depending on the situation you might be willing to sacrifice a little bit of quality to get slow motion and maybe you're filming something where you don't need slow motion that much so you're going to film at a lower frame rate to try to get the most quality possible because you know you're just not going to need to slow something down to 20 of its original speed so that's kind of the trade-off of using 120 versus 24 frames per second and what you decide to use really just depends on your specific situation and what you're filming so there is one more frame rate that i should talk about because it's becoming more accessible to consumers recently and this is 240 frames per second 240 frames per second is gonna let you slow your footage down to 10 of its original speed this is excessively slow but it can give you a very cool effect that's not seen too often online so i think it can be a good way to make your videos stand out but to the point i was making earlier about quality filming at 240 frames per second is going to result in significantly worse image quality frame by frame when you're doing a comparison compared to a 24 frame per second image so you need to compare again what you're using it for and decide whether using 240 frames per second is necessary or if you can maybe get away with a slower frame rate like 120 frames per second or 60 frames per second i think there are some very specific use cases for super slow motion frame rates like 240 frames per second or higher but i don't necessarily think that you should be filming everything at 240 frames per second because you're just gonna see the quality of your videos decrease overall if that's the only frame rate that you're using but when you're filming at 240 frames per second your shutter speed is going to be around one over 500 and this is a really nice shutter speed in my opinion for filming sports videos at because it's going to give you like basically no motion blur it's like you're shooting a series of photos the entire time that you're filming and it's going to create this cool jittery effect a lot of the time you'll see people on instagram posting with video that's shot at one over 500 shutter and it just gives a really cool look that i love i personally use a shutter speed around one over 400 or one over 500 most of the time when i'm filming so i think that you're the motion blur lack of motion blur that you'll get when filming at 240 frames per second is actually really nice now i want to talk about over cranking which is a technique that i use a lot when i'm filming my sports videos and over cranking is when you film at a shutter speed that's faster than a 180 degree shutter angle for your respective frame rate which means that you're using a shutter speed that's faster than one over double your frame rate if you're talking about shutter speed and i think that this is really cool because when you're filming action you don't want your subjects to be blurry as you're whipping the camera around you want everything to be very clear also if you're filming at a slightly faster frame rate you'll find that it's easier to motion track stuff because there's more identifiable objects in the frame if you're filming at one over 50 shutter speed you're going to find that when you're whipping the camera to follow a subject the subject's a little bit blurry maybe you won't be able to make other eye as well if you're doing like an eye tracking effect but if you're filming at 1 over 400 shutter speed that person is going to be very clear you're going to be able to make out all their features and it'll be really easy to track their eye for example if you're doing an eye tracking effect through the shot and get that information out of it to do your motion tracking i usually shoot at 1 over 400 shutter speed at least if i'm filming at 120 frames per second and even if i was filming at 24 frames per second and i was filming action i don't know why i would be doing that but there's some specific use cases why you might want to if i was doing that i would film it at least one over 250 shutter speed even though the native shutter speed that i should be filming at at a 180 degree shutter angle would be one over 50 just because i like that over cranked look it is important to consider though that the faster you make your shutter speed the less light you're going to get into your image and i think it's much more important to properly expose your image so that you can actually see what's happening and get good colors out of your video and i wouldn't ever compromise the exposure of my image just to get an overcranked look i would much rather expose properly and film at a 180 degree shutter angle but when i'm able to do so without compromising the exposure of my image i love to overcrank my shutter to reduce the motion blur in my sports videos and give them what is in my opinion a much cooler so now you know how i shoot my sports videos and you should have an idea of all the popular frame rates that are available to you their respective shutter speeds and how these things affect the look in your sports videos when you're out filming if you like this video then please make sure to subscribe because i post videography and video editing tips tutorial videos for sports videographers very similar to this one on a regular basis and i would love to have you around for those and if you have any further questions or there's something that i didn't do a great job covering in this video then let me know in the comments and i would love to get back to you down there anyways that's gonna be all for this video so until next time peace but when i'm able to do this when also the 24 frames per second please try that again what frame rate should you fill that in making sports videos if you've always wondered the answer to this question then you're going to love this that but when i have the option to do stuff

Channel: Peter Sarellas

Views: 53,613

Keywords: Sports videography, frame rates explained, frame rate, frame rates, what frame rate should I use, 120fps, 24p vs 60p, film maker, filmmaker, basketball videography, camera settings, equipment for sports videography, basketball videography tutorial, beginner camera, camera basics, basics of videography, sports videography, slow motion, shutter speed, frame rate explained, 48 fps, 24 fps, basketball highlight br oll, basketball b roll, basketball, cinematography, peter sarellas

Id: DBiUWQD8C34

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021