30 fps
Also known as: 30p, thirty frames
Thirty frames a second, the practical default for action footage because it suits web delivery and leaves a little room for slowing down.
Updated
What it means
Thirty frames is the compromise everybody lands on. It is smooth enough that motion reads cleanly, cheap enough on cards and batteries, and the rate most platforms treat as normal.
It is not a cinema rate. 24 fps is what film uses and what a Cinematic look depends on, and thirty reads as slightly more immediate and slightly less filmic than that.
It divides awkwardly into some displays and neatly into others. Sixty-hertz screens show it without trouble, which is most of the reason it became the default for web video in the first place.
How it works in practice
It tolerates a small amount of slowing. Dropping thirty frames to around eighty percent speed holds up, where anything more needs Frame interpolation or a higher rate chosen at capture.
Shutter follows from it. The 180-degree shutter rule puts shutter near a sixtieth here, which is the setting that produces natural blur rather than the stepped look of a fast shutter.
Mixing it with sixty needs one decision. A timeline settles on one rate, so a session shot at both ends up resampled one way or the other before anything can be cut together.
What to watch out for
Choosing it by default gives up the slow motion option. A trick worth replaying at quarter speed needed 60 fps or higher at the time, and nothing in post recovers those frames afterwards.
It stutters under artificial light at the wrong shutter. Mains frequency and frame rate interact, and the interaction produces a flicker that no grade afterwards removes.
The label hides a small lie. Many cameras record 29.97 rather than thirty exactly, and mixing the two in one timeline produces a slow Sync drift that only appears several minutes in.
How RawClip handles it
Footage at mixed rates is handled together and the delivered sequence renders at one of them, so a card with thirty and sixty frame clips needs nothing done to it. Higher rates give the slow motion passages more to work with, and mixing them freely on one card is normal.