Refresh Rate vs Frame Rate: What's the Difference?
How a TV's refresh rate differs from a video's frame rate, and why a mismatch between the two can cause judder.
Frame rate is how many images per second the source video contains; refresh rate is how many times per second your TV's screen redraws an image, regardless of the source. A mismatch between the two — such as 24fps film content on a 60Hz display — can cause judder, a subtle stutter in motion, unless the TV handles the conversion smoothly.
Key Takeaways
- Frame rate belongs to the source video; refresh rate belongs to the display itself.
- A TV's refresh rate is typically higher than or equal to common content frame rates.
- Judder can occur when frame rate and refresh rate don't divide evenly into each other.
- Most modern TVs include processing specifically to smooth out this mismatch.
- A high refresh rate TV doesn't increase a source video's actual frame rate.
Frame rate and refresh rate sound like the same thing and get used interchangeably, but they describe two different parts of the video chain — the source and the display.
What Is Frame Rate?
As covered in our frame rate guide, frame rate is how many individual images the source video itself contains per second — 24fps, 30fps, 60fps, and so on. This is fixed by however the content was originally produced.
What Is Refresh Rate?
Refresh rate is how many times per second your TV's screen redraws its image, measured in Hz. Common TV refresh rates are 60Hz and 120Hz. This is a property of the display hardware itself, independent of whatever content is currently playing on it.
What Happens When They Don't Match?
When a source frame rate doesn't divide evenly into a display's refresh rate — 24fps film content on a 60Hz TV is the classic example — the TV has to repeat certain frames unevenly to fill the gap, which can produce a subtle stutter in motion called judder.
How TVs Handle This
Most modern TVs include processing specifically designed to smooth this mismatch, sometimes with a setting related to motion smoothing or judder reduction. Results vary by TV model, and some viewers prefer these processing modes turned off since they can introduce their own visual side effects on certain content.
Does a Higher Refresh Rate TV Help?
A higher refresh rate display gives a TV more flexibility in how it handles frame-rate conversion, which can reduce judder, but it doesn't increase the actual frame rate of the source content itself — you're still watching 24fps content encoded at 24fps, just displayed more flexibly.
Frequently Asked Questions
It can improve how evenly frame-rate mismatches are handled, reducing judder, but it doesn't create additional real frames beyond what the source content actually contains.
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