Frames Per Second FPS

Frames Per Second or FPS is how many complete images a security camera captures every second. It takes two fields or images (sometimes called IPS or images per second). A field is one half of a frame, with 262.5 lines in the NTSC standard. The full number of lines in the NTSC standard is 525. It takes two interlaced fields to make up a full frame. Interlaced television monitors display their images in two steps. The first step paints every other line, while the second paints the remaining ones. In that case it takes sixty fields per second to equal thirty frames per second.

An analog security camera will capture images at 30 fps using an interlaced method. Even though this is possible it is rare that the images are recorded at this rate. The reason for this is because of the large amount of storage that is required using such high frame rates. Also there really is little advantage to recording things at that high of speed. As an example a movie at the theater is shown at 24 fps. Video at 15 fps is still considered to be full motion video. You can still capture the images you need in most cases even at 7.5 frames per second or less.

In IP cameras the fps is usually set at the camera instead of at the recording device in order to help with bandwidth issues as well as storage issues.

When recording to a DVR the frame rate and resolution are combined factors to determining storage needs.