Is 20 fps good for shooting videos with a digital camera?

I need to shoot a video with a new HP digital camera because I don't have one anymore. I want to buy a cheap one and it has 20fps video shooting. The Sony Cybershot I used before had 30fps, is there a huge difference?

I don't even really totally understand frames per second, so could someone also give me an example between the differences of 20 and 30 fps.

The difference between 30FPS and 20FPS is that the human eye sees things at 30FPS so when its going 20FPS its going to look jerky to the human eye. Anything faster than 30FPS will look smooth since the human eye cannot go faster (or much faster than) 30FPS. Thats why most gamers want their game going 40-50FPS so that they do not miss any thing in the action due to a jerky visual, or course hard core gamers have it going like 100-200FPS which is riduculous.

Well, there'll be ten less frames per second, so the video might be a little (a lot) jerkier.

I'd say it depends on how important it is to you that your digital camera shoots high quality video - if you just want to have it captured and don't mind that it's not the best quality, by all means, go for price, but if you want better quality, go for 30 fps. Maybe you can try them out in the store before you buy one so that you can see the difference?

Yes there is and here is why ...

Film cameras operate at 24 fps. That has been the standard since "talkies" hit the scene.

Video cameras have always operated at 30fps in the US because the power going to the TV sets is at 60 Hz. That means that each frame shot on video is scanned twice on the TVs screen.

If you notice your PC cam operates at about 5 to 15 frames per second and at those speeds you experience a jumpy quality to the image.

YES, twenty frames per second, vs thirty frames per second. Sure you can do the math, right? Plus, HP sucks, I know that it's not PC for me to say that cause I'm in the PNW and HP is an Oregon company, but they are nothing but low quality trouble.