In all relevant video recording apps on iPhones and Android phones, as same as in modern real cameras, there are video recording quality settings featuring resolutions such as 1080p and 4K and frames-per-second (fps) rates such as 24, 30, and 60. Here I’ll try to explain simply what they mean in practice.
Video Resolution: 1080p vs 4K
The 1080p resolution, also known as Full HD, consists of 1920-by-1080 pixels in horizontal and 1080-by-1920 in vertical video recording modes. It doesn’t provide as sharp and detailed video as 4K, also known as Ultra HD, with a 3840-by-2160 or 2160-by-3840 pixel count. However, you probably won’t notice the difference between 1080p and 4K when viewing videos on small devices like phones. That’s especially the case on phones with screens that physically don’t have pixel counts greater than 1080-by-1920 or similar.
Furthermore, social media and websites you upload the videos to usually apply some compression to the uploads to reduce the data bandwidth and storage usage. That lowers the video quality, so it is questionable in that case whether your high-resolution upload will have a visibly positive effect on the look of the video.
Recording in 4K makes much more sense if your videos will be watched on larger high-resolution displays like 4K TVs, computer monitors, laptops, and tablets. On these displays the picture sharpness and detail quality difference between 1080p and 4K can be very visible, especially on large TV and monitor screens.
A side benefit of 4K versus 1080p is that the higher pixel count of 4K allows you to crop video material in order to make it zoomed in, with a bit of loss in picture quality. You can do that on 1080p too, but the quality loss would be noticeably greater.
Choosing to record in 4K instead of 1080p has its downsides. 4K videos have larger file sizes, so they can fill up your phone’s storage space much quicker than 1080p videos. Also, recording in 4K tends to consume more battery juice.
Another 4K benefit is that you can export a 4K video as 1080p in post processing to reduce noise in comparison to the same video recorded natively in 1080p.
It’s also worth noting that there are other resolutions as well, for instance the old low-res 720p and, on select high-end phone models, extra-high 8K.
Video Frame Rates: 24, 30, 60 fps
Frames-per-second setting determines how many still pictures one second of a video contains. The higher fps setting is, the more images per second will be captured, making the video appear smoother.
That’s especially visible during panning from side to side or recording fast moving objects like cars in motion. Movement in 24 fps will look choppier than 30 fps and much choppier than 60 fps. However, 24 fps is known for its traditional cinematic look. Most popular movies are shot in 24 fps. 30 fps adds more smoothness to the movement, but doesn’t provide real-life-like fluidity of 60 fps. 60fps can be very beneficial in recording high-speed movements, like in fast-paced sports. But, it’s questionable whether a particular viewer prefers a too-realistic look of 60 fps versus a more dreamy and artistic 24 and 30 fps look.
Keep in mind that the cinematic look may require adjusting the camera's shutter speed together with fps settings. The general rule to achieve the cinematic feel of a 24fps (and eventually 30pfs) video is to use a shutter speed that's around double the frame rate. For instance, a 24fps video looks the most similar to traditional movies if the shutter speed is set to around 48. This relatively low shutter speed adds motion blur, therefore reducing choppiness. The default iPhone and Android camera apps usually don't have the option to adjust the shutter speed. Select higher-end Android phone models do have that feature built into their camera apps, but iPhones don't at all. Thankfully, there are professional video recording apps for both Android phones and iPhones, such as Filmic Pro, with ability to set the shutter speed.
Choosing 60 fps is also beneficial if you want to create slow motion videos. For instance, you can take a 60 fps video, slow it down in a video editing app, and export it as a smooth 2-times slower motion 30 fps video. Slowing down 60 and 30 fps to 24 fps may produce choppy results due to fps ratio mismatch.
For slow motion purposes, select phones provide even higher fps settings like 120 and 240 fps, with some resolution quality limitations, since these ultra-high fps settings combined with high resolutions may be too heavy computing-wise during recording.
As same as with the resolution, higher frame rate video recordings produce larger files and drain the battery faster.
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