

In electronic camera specifications frame rate refers to the maximum possible rate frames could be captured, but in practice, other settings (such as exposure time) may reduce the actual frequency to a lower number than the frame rate. Additionally, in the context of computer graphics performance, FPS is the rate at which a system, particularly a GPU, is able to generate frames, and refresh rate is the frequency at which a display shows completed frames.

In these contexts, frame rate may be used interchangeably with frame frequency and refresh rate, which are expressed in hertz. This definition applies to film and video cameras, computer animation, and motion capture systems.

