Project frame rate

The project’s frame rate sets the grid that every edit lands on. A new project runs at 30 fps, and a project opened from a movie takes the movie’s rate. A rate chosen for one export is separate: see Export frame rate.

Where: Document tab ▸ Frame Rate
Agent tools: set_canvas

Choose a rate

In the Frame Rate section of the Document tab, choose a rate from Rate: 24, 23.976, 25, 30, 29.97, 50, 60 or Match First Clip. The last item, Custom, is what the popup shows for a rate it doesn’t list.

The change is one undo step. See what it does to the timeline.

Match the first clip

Match First Clip takes the rate of the earliest clip on the timeline whose file has video. It beeps if there isn’t one.

It sets the rate once, and later changes to the timeline don’t move it. The popup then shows that rate, or Custom if it doesn’t list it. A picture counts as having video here, and it reads as 30 fps.

Footage at a different rate

Clips don’t have to match the project’s rate, and cameras at different rates can share a timeline. Frame Job doesn’t speed a clip up or slow it down to fit. The clip plays in real time, and each project frame shows the clip’s picture at that moment. So a 25 fps clip in a 30 fps project repeats some frames, and a 60 fps clip skips some. There’s nothing to convert first.

A variable-rate file, such as one from a phone, plays the same way. Set the project to your main camera’s rate, so its frames land one for one.

A project can run at a rate the popup doesn’t have, because a file’s rate is kept as it is when you open it.

A file at 24, 23.976, 25, 30, 29.97, 48, 50, 60 or 59.94 fps keeps that exact rate.
Any other rate is kept to three decimals, so a 47.3 fps recording stays at 47.3 and doesn’t become 48. Screen recordings often have odd rates.

At a rate it doesn’t list, Rate shows Custom, with the check beside it. The Frame rate row at the top of the Document tab shows the real rate. Choosing Custom beeps and changes nothing.

Choosing any other item changes the rate. Match First Clip brings the file’s own rate back.

What a rate change does

Changing the rate moves every clip start, clip length, action and marker onto the new frame grid, inside nests as well.

A clip’s length is held to the media it has left, so a coarser grid can’t push a clip past the end of its file.
A clip always keeps at least one frame.
An action stays inside its clip. A speed ramp’s action is only snapped to the new grid.
Where a clip starts reading its source doesn’t change, and sound fades keep their lengths.

If two markers land on the same frame at the new rate, only one stays: the one added first.

Frame Job doesn’t check the new positions for overlaps, and it won’t stop a rate change because of one. Each edge moves by less than a frame, so an overlap can grow by a frame at most.

Read the timeline’s length

Duration, under Rate, is a read-only row showing the timeline’s length in the project’s timecode format.

With an agent

set_canvas takes fps as [numerator, denominator]: [30, 1], [30000, 1001] for 29.97 or [24000, 1001] for 23.976. Any fraction works, so an agent can set a rate the popup doesn’t list, such as 48 or 59.94 fps. A 0 in either place fails and the rate stays as it was. See Tools: tracks, markers and canvas.