It’s the age-old debate of which framerate on your GoPro to pick for action sports: 30 FPS or 60 FPS (the “action framerate“).
Further down I got some of my own mountain bike POV videos in all the framerates that modern GoPros can capture: from 24p to 240p
I’d encourage you to look at all the clips below with an unbiased approach.
Try to see for yourself which look you like more and what differences you recognize.
Spoiler
30 fps looks smooth, and natural and adds a bit of motion blur. Easy on the eyes.
24 and 25 fps can look a little harsher, but more movie-like. Also adding cinematic motion blur.
60 fps tends to look uncanny, and unnaturally crisp. Riding also looks slower without motion blur. It’s a framerate used for 2x slow-motion playback and has nothing to do with what you’re filming.
In the past, 60p helped a little with blurry, shaky footage. But stabilization is so good now that there is no reason to use 60 fps anymore – unless you like the look.
120 and 240 fps are purely slow motion framerates in order to slow down footage 4-8x in editing – back down to 30 fps.
I have my clear preferences but this video compilation is for you to get a good understanding so you can decide for yourself what you want to use.
There are general filmmaking “best practices” but in the end, it’s also a subjective personal preference.
24 FPS
Maybe that was 25p, I can’t remember. It looks the same as 24p but depending on your region (NTSC or PAL), only one of them is available.
30 FPS
60 FPS
Since I never film in 60 fps I had to find a MTB clip from Mark Page.
120 fps and 240 fps
Below is a video I edited for all the GoPro video settings. Including slow motion framerates 120 fps and 240 fps with real-time and slowed-down footage.
Starting at 27:29 in the same video, there are other framerates as well. But nothing new at this point if you’ve seen the other videos above.
