Am I missing something with framrate?

[nicoloks]

I have seen several drone blogs now recommend that you record in 30 fps and then once editing is complete export to 24 fps for the cinematic experience. About the only reasons I have found stated for this is smoothness of panning.

Given the Mavic's fairly limited 60Mbit constant video bit rate, I would have thought the recommendation would be to record in 24 fps. Wouldn't this 6 fps difference equate to there being a 20% increase in capacity per frame to store the finer detail when recording at 24 fps? What am I missing here?

 

[Houpla]

24fps is more prone to "strobing" especially if the shutter is more than 48. Motion can also be blurred as the slow shutter cannot stop the action. 24 is great for slow action. 30fps is normally better as it is the standard video frame rate/ 24fps is often converted to 30 intoducing 6 blending frames made up of half the previous and half the next frame. This is not a frame with good definition as there is motion blur in the actual 'created" frame.

Shooting 30fps will give you overall better and more consistent results.

 

[DonLandis]

The only reason you would want to record in 24fps is to be compatible with film industry standard, not TV or video standards. IF you were planning to distribute your work on a Blu Ray disk then you would want to record at 24 fps. Otherwise the more frames the smoother your video will be as long as your playback equipment can match the content frame rate. In other words, if you have an option to shoot at 120 fps, then you would select that if you intended for all that content to be presented in slow motion.

It is true that most editors will convert a recording at 30fps and render it out to 24 fps for a blu ray disk standard, but the conversion will suffer some motion artifacts. Some editors are better at this than others. Any recording equipment loss in bits per pixel as a result of selecting higher frame rate is much less noticeable, then the motion artifacts from selecting 24fps and later upconverting to 30 fps. for video presentation. Of course if your TV has 24 fps capability and you record in 24 fps, you will not have the motion artifacts, just a "cinematic" look to the motion.

As a long time film maker and videographer, my choice has always been to shoot news, documentaries, advertising, and educational content at television standards ( 29,97 fps ). If shooting a sporting event, I would often shoot at 60 fps and then render to 59.94 fps interlaced which works great for TV. When burning to Blu Ray render to 720 60P works with great compatibility too. But if shooting a drama, fiction, or surreal story, then using that "cinematic look" gives the work that feeling of the theatrical fantasy world. It is more art then science.

There are some good YT videos on the various shooting formats, but I have seen lots of self taught self appointed experts who never worked in the industry, put out some pretty awful looking color grading modification to the great image that the Mavic Pro does with "Normal" settings. Over saturated, over sharpness compensation and completely wrong color temperatures for the environment. One guy actually thought snow and clouds were all magenta in color. But he was proud of the extra punch he gave to the green trees. When it doesn't look natural, it probably isn't.