Why 60FPS Works For Gaming, But Not For Movies

When it comes to frames per second (FPS), most would agree that more means better. Higher FPS means smoother, more realistic visuals and more visual information each second—both of which should give it a clear advantage. This is certainly true in terms of gaming, where studies show that a higher frame rate improves your performance. However, while 60 FPS is the lowest most people are comfortable gaming at, modern blockbusters still follow the century-old standard of 24 FPS. Avid gamers say even 30 FPS is overly choppy and borderline unplayable for most modern multiplayer games. So what makes movies different?

60 FPS and higher frame rates work for gaming because the more information you get each second, the faster you can react. This is necessary for competitive, fast-paced shooters and games where quick reflexes matter, but not so much for watching a movie. Initially, the 24 FPS standard was created out of necessity: the earliest silent movies could go as low as 16 FPS on hand-cranked cameras, but the number had to be bumped up for audio synchronization. Every major filmmaker at the time agreed that this number should be 24 FPS. It was also much cheaper to shoot at 24 frames than at higher frame rates, since more frames required more film, and more film meant higher production costs.

However, even if there were reasons for it in the past, why do movies still use 24 FPS or 30 FPS instead of 60 FPS? Several psychological and economic factors explain this, and it also relates to how cinema has evolved. Since almost every cinematic movie in the past century has used 24 FPS, people subconsciously equate this frame rate with a cinematic aesthetic. Filmmakers have tried higher frame rates, such as 2012's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" (shot at 48 FPS) and 2016's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" (shot at 120 FPS), but audience reception has repeatedly been poor.

The reason why 24 FPS works so well for movies, and 60 FPS feels uncanny and unnatural, has to do with realism. Viewers associate this lower FPS with a cinematic feel, and overly smooth visuals feel too realistic, causing what is called the soap opera effect. A higher FPS does work for certain kinds of live-action content, such as TV sitcoms and late-night talk shows. However, in narrative films or action sequences, the added realism can make it harder for viewers to immerse themselves in the story.

A higher frame rate is also much more unforgiving when it comes to mistakes. Each movement is emphasized, making flaws much more apparent. It's also more difficult to fix issues in post, as smoother motion makes edits more noticeable. With a lower FPS, there's less time to notice faults, and post-production fixes and motion blur can mask small issues.

Physical film is rarely used today, but the same factor that drove costs up in the past still applies. Each frame in a movie is a still image, and each frame takes up a certain amount of data; if you double the number of frames, you double the storage space needed.

For example, recording 24 FPS 4K footage on an ARRI ALEXA 35 camera, often used in cinema, takes 1.24 TB per hour of footage, or 21.2 GB per minute. If we record the same footage at 60 FPS, an hour would require 3.1 TB, whereas a minute would require almost 53 GB. Modern movies also capture far more footage than makes the final cut—in some cases, up to 480 hours for a 2-hour movie, as with "Mad Max: Fury Road." Add to this how recording in 8K quadruples the storage space required and how HDD prices are rising rapidly, and it becomes clear why frame rate can significantly affect production costs.

It's not just the companies making these movies either; consumers take a hit as well. While the final, cut-and-compressed version of any movie is much smaller than its raw footage, it can still take up a lot of space. 2023's "Oppenheimer," for example, takes up about 100 GB on a 4K Blu-ray, which is already nearing the maximum capacity of a triple-layer Blu-ray disc. If the same movie were distributed at 60 FPS, it'd require more than 200 GB, far exceeding the capacity of any commercially available optical disc. The same is also true for online streaming. Increasing the number of frames also increases the bandwidth required to stream said movie.