We all know the motion picture is a lie. That movement on screen? It’s just a bunch of still images. Still images that seem more like believable, realistic, lifelike motion the faster they flicker along. Faster is better, and that 48 frame-per-second version of The Hobbit was just the beginning.

If you understand how film projectors work, you’ll know that the individual images that make up a film strip are run through a projector assembly and flash consecutively before an lighted aperture that projects the image up onto the screen, which gives the illusion of motion at high enough speeds. Movie magic! The rate at which these frames are shown is expressed in frames per second (FPS) for traditional celluloid film, and as a “refresh rate” measured in hertz (Hz) for digital films and display monitors. In both cases, that value reflects how fast the still images can flicker, and the faster they can flicker, the more lifelike and realistic the motion appears.

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