When you sit and watch a movie, I bet that you're not thinking of how many still images it takes to make one second of movement or how many stills have to go across the screen to make a movie flow smoothly. Most people would say "of course not". But, those involved in video production must pay attention to this. Frame rate is very important to those in the field.
Frame rate is how fast images go across a screen or monitor. Frames are technically still images that are sped up to a certain speed so that we humans perceive them as a constant stream. Frames consist of individual, successive images. When trying to produce excellent videos, the number of frames per second contributes to the video quality. In fact, the more frames per second, the better.
Most video produced by filmmakers comes in 30 frames per second (60 interlaced frames). This is the standard format for television. A rate of 15 frames per second is acceptable to most viewers, but it's just not as fluid as 30 frames per second. Anything less than this leads to jumpy video.
As a videographer, you must think of frame ratio when making films. If you're satisfied with merely having little more than a slideshow than go for three fps (frames per second), but most people are not. In order for a video to look consistent and fluent to a user, it must have at least 30 fps.
There are many software systems out there that make frame-rate adjustments automatically. Apple's Final Cut Express 4 ($200 retail) and SprintCam Live are excellent options to consider when looking at software that can provide high frame rates.
Advances in frame ratio have allowed scientists to capture spores being released from a flower or even micro-bursts in space. Some digital cameras and camcorders have been known to capture up to 1 million fps. For most people's needs, however, 30 fps is adequate. When considering video quality, you should always consider how many frames per second that your camcorder can record.