Frame rates for stock footage, slow motion included

Stock footage frame rates each agency accepts

The three agencies publish closed lists. They agree on eight rates and differ only around 48 fps.

The decimal rates are the broadcast versions of the round ones: 23.98 is 24 x 1000/1001 (23.976), 29.97 is 30 x 1000/1001 and 59.94 is 60 x 1000/1001. Both forms are on every list. What matters is that the file carries exactly one of them, so read the rate from the exported file rather than from the camera menu.

If a shoot is meant for Adobe Stock as well, leave 48 fps out. The other file rules for each agency, from codecs to resolutions, are on the stock video requirements page.

Choosing a rate: light, motion and look

No agency prefers one listed rate over another. Shutterstock’s advice is about consistency: shoot in an accepted frame rate, and shoot and export at the same one. Three practical factors decide the rest; these are our advice, not agency rules.

• Mains frequency. Lights on 50 Hz power pulse 100 times per second, those on 60 Hz power 120 times. Shutterstock’s distortion standard asks for “frame rates and shutter speeds that are equal to the light pulse rate to eliminate flicker.” Where the mains run at 50 Hz, 25 or 50 fps at 1/50 or 1/100 avoids it; at 60 Hz, 30 or 60 fps at 1/60 or 1/120.
• Motion. 50 to 60 fps renders fast action more smoothly, and gives buyers a clip they can slow to 40 or 50 percent in a 24, 25 or 30 fps edit.
• Look. 23.98 or 24 fps is the usual choice for footage meant to cut into film-style edits.

Shutter speed rules reviewers apply

Shutterstock files frame rate and shutter problems under one quality standard (14 July 2025). A clip is rejected for:

• a frame rate that is not on the accepted list;
• visible ghosting, or duplicate or skipped frames, caused by a frame rate conversion;
• noticeable frame blending, or “combing” left by deinterlacing;
• visible ghosting due to a low shutter speed;
• jerky motion due to an improper shutter speed.

A fast shutter is not banned. The same article shows a clip filmed at a high shutter speed and accepts it because “the motion is fluid.” The test is what the motion looks like on screen, judged against the subject. Adobe lists “low frame rates” among its video refusal reasons and asks you to avoid rolling-shutter artifacts such as skew, jello effects and flash banding.

The usual starting point on set is the 180-degree rule: a shutter speed of about one over twice the frame rate. It is a camera convention, and under artificial light it has to give way to the light’s pulse rate.

Shutterstock’s stabilization standard adds a warning about motion: panning too quickly can cause a “strobing” effect that emphasizes jerky motion. Slow the pan down rather than raising the shutter speed, which makes strobing more visible.

Delivering slow motion within an accepted rate

A 120 fps file is on no agency list, so slow motion has to reach the reviewer at a listed rate. Pond5’s creative brief on slow motion (January 2024) describes the principle: record at a frame rate higher than normal viewing, then play the material back at the standard frame rate. There are two ways to deliver it.

Conform it in your editor

Conforming tells the editor to play the recorded frames at a new rate, one source frame per output frame. Nothing is blended, dropped or invented. The speed is the ratio of the two rates:

Length grows by the same factor. A 120 fps take conformed to 24 fps runs five times longer, so 12 seconds of recording already fill the 60-second maximum that all three agencies apply. Trim before you export.

Or deliver it in real time at 50 to 60 fps

The alternative is to upload the take in real time at 50, 59.94 or 60 fps, which every agency lists, and let the buyer conform it in their own timeline. One file then serves real-time and slow-motion edits, but the slowdown stops at the 40 to 50 percent shown above, and the reviewer sees the clip at normal speed.

Three more points for high-speed shooting. Pond5’s brief notes that high frame rates need more light and that some cameras lose resolution at high frame rates: if yours drops to 1080p at 120 fps, the clip is HD, and enlarging it to 4K is the upscaling Adobe refuses. Under 50 Hz lighting, 120 fps cannot use a shutter that matches the light, so record at 100 fps at 1/100. Finally, say “slow motion” in the description and keywords, as Shutterstock’s own example does: “Track and Field athlete doing pole vault, slow motion.”

Time-lapse and hyperlapse

A time-lapse has no recording frame rate: you choose one when you render the sequence. Render at a listed rate, usually 24, 25 or 30 fps, and the frame count sets the length. At 25 fps, a 20-second clip needs 500 frames, about 17 minutes of shooting at one frame every 2 seconds. Among its tips for keeping clips within 5 to 60 seconds, Shutterstock’s clip length article lists shooting time-lapse or hyperlapse. The agency rules on clips made from photos, and on flicker, are in how to sell time-lapse footage.

Interlaced footage and frame rate conversions

Shutterstock accepts interlaced and progressive footage, provided the interlacing is not distracting. Its interlacing standard explains that 50i records 50 fields per second, the even and odd lines captured at different times, and that converting interlaced video to progressive can introduce frame blending or ghosting. Its advice is to shoot progressive whenever possible. Adobe and Pond5 do not publish a separate rule on interlacing.

Converting between rates is the larger risk. Turning 25 fps into 30, or 60 into 24, means repeating, dropping or blending frames, the very faults on Shutterstock’s list. Since every agency accepts both 25 and 30 fps, there is no reason to convert a clip between them: upload it at the rate it was shot.

Before upload, step through a fast pan frame by frame. Repeated frames, doubled edges and combing show up there first. The video quality rejections page covers the other causes, and the video spec checker reads the frame rate from the file and compares it with each agency’s list.