Your 120fps footage looks weird and here's why

Have you ever felt like there was something wrong with your 120fps footage? Do you see a lot of jitter and even stutter when you play it at full speed? I know the answer is yes, so let's talk about it.

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EPISODE BREAKDOWN
0:00 Your 120fps footage looks weird
0:41 Frame rates & image quality
2:15 Slow motion footage
3:09 60fps footage at full speed
4:19 120fps footage at full speed
5:27 120fps image comparison
6:09 Convenience vs quality
7:30 Speed ramping

#SportsVideography

[BeyondTheGame_E]

Does anyone change their frame rate while filming sports? If so, when and why?

[ags]

Only way to fix it is to use a gimbal and a slower shutter speed like 1/120th at 120fps. The only other idea would be to have 2 cameras side by side at the different frame rates. That would be overkill though.

[DLD_Photography]

I shoot 60p 60p on a 30p timeline. Because I am kind of a "Run & Gun" filmmaker, this gives me the option to use normal speed or slow it down 50%.

[fluff]

Wow, i did not know about the jittering effect 120fps can cause. thank you for also finishing with a recomendation rather than just giving us probelms but no solutions ahah

[Will-]

Great video again! Love that song too, I've used it in one of my clients videos and it definitely hits!

[maryskrudland]

Another great video. I learned a lot as usual 😊

[daniel_sturgess]

if you nest the footage in premiere pro at 120fps then turn the speed up to 400% and select optical flow this fixes the choppiness

[LYTRA]

thank you for your content!!! im starting out on sports videography and your videos have been so much help

[michaeltan]

Incredible video! I am so surprised to have learned as much as I did as a film student!

[mathfigure]

For a video to look perfectly smooth, the shutter angle of the camera must be 360 (as is for the human eye) and the FPS of the display must match (or be a multiple) of the FPS of the camera. Otherwise some video artifacts (like jittering) are visible. Not all people notice video artifacts because their reflexes and visual perception ability vary greatly from person to person.

[RakMotoAdventures-xkel]

Bro you saved my life. THank you soo much.

[TeeLow]

you get a sub for this breakdown. very easy to understand thank you!

[compaadres]

Hmmm 🤔. Yeah. Makes sense. Thanks. Good thing to look out for.

[MDMiller]

Mr. E. I am not a video shooter, but 99.5% still photography. Still, I like to get action video and smooth slow motion.
Right now, I understand that if I shoot at 120 fps, which my camera and cell phone can do, and play it back at, say, 30 fps, I get slow motion.
I also understand a rule is to set the camera shutter speed at double the frames per second. Ok, I can do that.

But, what happened last night my family and I were watching my grandson play guitar in a high school show.
My son, who is not into photography at all, told me to set my frame rate in my cell phone to 120, and it will come out normal speed when played back.
Thinking that my cell would always play at 24 or 30 fps, I told him the presentation will play in slow motion. He said no, it will play normally.
I am not aware, right now, if my phones playback speed can be altered, so I thought slow motion.
I shot a test of my son walking toward me and played it back. It came out normally, not slowmo.

I am not aware of the idea of recording at 120 and playing back at 120 fps, but is that what the phone is doing by default.
I don't understand your video in that regard. I am not into my video capabilities with my camera or phone, other than the simple basics.
Thanks.

[gmoneygmoney]

This video highlights the problem I'm seeing as a newbie filming my son's basketball games. The common YouTube advice to just film at a higher frame rate makes sense when the entire clip will be SloMo, but when you can't do that (fast action sports), you have the problem stated in this video, jitter due to dropped frames. Thanks for making this video to explain this situation properly.
For me, 24/30FPS is too blurry for the fast action and all the whipping and zooming from the middle court sideline I have to shoot from. So I go with 60fps to minimize the blur. I prioritize less full speed blur over more jittery slo mo of 60fps slowed down 50% on a 60fps time line. But that's because I film to document the whole game with slomo being few and far between. If it were the other way around and I was making a highlight film, then I would prioritize the Slo motion and put the 60fps clip on a 30fps time-line and live with the full speed jitter. Seems like it's a trade off with no way around it unless you had 2 cameras and 2 people, one doing 24/30 and the other 60fps to bring in slo-mo into the 24/30 footage. Does that seem right or am I missing something?

[barrysmit]

Depends how you perceive quality. If you are judging quality by how much info/data there is in each frame there then you're correct. But if you are looking at a video holistically, then a video played back at 60fps will have twice the quality of a 30p video because the viewer will experience twice as many frames with a 60p video therefore twice as much data.

[NormansWorldMovies]

I think it's best to not feature a higher frame rate in a lower frame rate timeline and just encode to a lower frame rate if need, so it looks better

[nefarious_prod]

I don’t have a camera that can shoot 120fps yet so I’m glad you made a video about this before I ran into this issue!

[CPerryTravels]

Great explanation! My only question is when shooting at 60fps and using the 180 shutter rule… when editing on 30p timeline do I need to add motion blur to anything that I leave full speed that isn’t action/fast paced? If so how much motion blur do you recommend?

[andredabaghian]

this video is so informative! Learned something new about 120fps that I did not know before! The footage in this video looks amazing. What type of lens and f stops are you shooting on?