Technical Stuff part 1

Technical Stuff Part 1: Frame Rates and Aspect Ratios

 

You may have noticed that there are different frame rates in video, with some rates flickering more than others. Frames Per Second, or FPS, is how the frames are measured. Here is a list of common Frame Rates:

 

FPS	Type
30	NTSC	American/Asian video format
25	PAL	European video format
24	Film	Frame rate traditionally used in film
12	Animation	Frame rate traditionally used in Animation
10	Web streaming	Frame rate traditionally used on the Web

 

Frame size: You also may have noticed when you open video files on your computer, that the size of the windows are different. Some poorer quality frame sizes are quite small, at 176 X 132, 320 X 240, going up to Standard Definition (SD) at 720 x 576, and High Definition (HD) at 720 X 1080. There are even higher resolutions, but for our purposes here, High Definition video will be used for the most part.

 

Aspect Ratio: Old fashioned televisions were sized at a 4:3 ratio:

 

 

But new Widescreen TVs are sized at a 16:9 ratio:

 

                                           

 

This is a more cinematic shape, and also, incidentally, roughly the same shape as the golden ratio (1.618:1), which has both an aesthetically pleasing shape found in nature and an elegant mathematical formula. This is what video is: a combination of math and aesthetics. The math is used to engineer the technology, and the aesthetics are used to make your video.