user22700: Quickly wave your hand in front of your face right now. Looks really blurry right? Now watch a 60 fps video. How come it looks so smooth? To me 60 FPS videos look even smoother than real life. Why?

user10619: Well this answer is just based on my knowledge of video cameras and is largely a best guess.
In video cameras motion blur is not (necessarily) determined by the fps but by the shutter speed (in cinema: shutter angle). The quicker/higher the less motion blur (I guess you can liken this to a screens refresh rate). Thus, things filmed at 24fps (cinema standard) but with a faster shutter speed will have a sort of other-worldly appearance as if everything is faster than in the real world. A good example of this is the opening Normandy scene in Saving Private Ryan.
When you combine a fast shutter speed with more than traditional fps (generally anything over 30) the motion looks surreal. Likely any other phenomenon is related to the way we process images and that I cannot adrquently speak of as I believe research in this field is largely mixed.
Here is a good link on shutter speed: http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/shutter-angle-tutorial

22700: <p>Quickly wave your hand in front of your face right now. Looks really blurry right? Now watch a 60 fps video. How come it looks so smooth? To me 60 FPS videos look even smoother than real life. Why?</p>
 10619: <p>Well this answer is just based on my knowledge of video cameras and is largely a best guess.</p>

<p>In video cameras motion blur is not (necessarily) determined by the fps but by the shutter speed (in cinema: shutter angle). The quicker/higher the less motion blur (I guess you can liken this to a screens refresh rate). Thus, things filmed at 24fps (cinema standard) but with a faster shutter speed will have a sort of other-worldly appearance as if everything is faster than in the real world. A good example of this is the opening Normandy scene in <em>Saving Private Ryan</em>.</p>

<p>When you combine a fast shutter speed with more than traditional fps (generally anything over 30) the motion looks surreal. Likely any other phenomenon is related to the way we process images and that I cannot adrquently speak of as I believe research in this field is largely mixed.</p>

<p>Here is a good link on shutter speed: <a href="http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/shutter-angle-tutorial" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.red.com/learn/red-101/shutter-angle-tutorial</a></p>
