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I'm having a hard time deciding what framerate I should use. I live in the PAL region (50Hz), and when I use 25 fps, I can use any shutter speed and never have light flickering. This is convienent when shooting in the evening with my dslr when there isn't too much movement. For example, I set 25 fps with 1/30, which allows me to lower the noise. However, I've noticed that most screems are at 60Hz, and after some testing, I'm not sure that 25fps on 60Hz looks as good as 30fps on 60Hz.

If I shoot at 30fps with a shutter of 1/50, I don't get flickering but a little more noise than at 1/30. I'd also like to mix that footage with my phone that can shoot 24fps, 25fps, 30fps, 60fps. My dslr can also shoot at 50fps with the advantage of no flickering at any shutter speed. For 60fps, a shutter of 1/100 doesn't give me flickering, but I wonder if slowed down, there's going to be too much blur. Unfortunaltely, my dslr down't have a shutter of 1/150 but 1/125 and after that it's 1/160, which have flickering. Or is it better to shoot 50fps at 1/100 for smoother motion even though it's not exactly half the speed of 30fps?

My phone seems to handle light flickering much better at normal framerates.

I also like the realistic look of 60 fps on a 60Hz display.

My questions are:

  • Should I shoot at a normal speed at 25 fps even though it doesn't look as good on a 60Hz screen?
  • Should I shoot at 30 fps 1/50 which looks better on 60Hz? Then should slow motion be 60fps 1/100?
  • Can I shoot normal motion at 60fps 1/60 and slow motion at 60fps 1/125 and slow it down? How is it going to look like?
  • Can I mix 25fps, 50fps and 60fps and export at 60fps assuming there's going to a pull down for the 25fps and 50fps clips on 60Hz screens?
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I think the frame rate that you plan to deliver your final video at should inform all the shutter/frame rate decisions when you are shooting.

If you're delivering at 25 fps, shoot at 25fps, or multiples of 25.

If you mix frame rates in your project that aren't multiples of the deliverable frame rate, you will end up doing frame rate conversion - either throwing away or generating extra frames, which will usually look bad (especially if there is a lot of movement in your footage).

You can change the frame rate of your footage after you've shot it by conforming it. This doesn't add or throw away frames, but will just play the footage slightly faster or slower to get to the frame rate you need. It's surprising how often you can get away with this trick, but again it depends on what you are filming, and how much of a change you are conforming to (e.g. 24 to 25fps is hard to spot, 60 to 25 is very obvious).

The choice about shutter speeds is trickier - because you might be able to get away with 1/50 shutter at 30fps, but if you're shooting smooth movement it might look weird. In general I would always try to shoot at "1 over double the frame rate", so 1/50 = 25 fps. If you're shooting for slow mo, I would try to use 1/120 at 60fps, etc.

It's tricky to answer more without knowing what you're actually shooting. If you're filming a lot of screens, you might be better off capturing the screen directly with screen recording software, and compositing it back in afterwards? That way you wouldn't get any flickering, and you would have more control (but it would take much longer to produce).

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