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Hi

I have a client who needs EX1 footage shot so that it can be edited in the US at 29.97 fps. However the same footage is also going to be edited differently in the UK at 50i.

What is the best frame rate to shoot at in this scenario? (I don't know what editing software is going to be used.)

Any advice will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Eric

My foremost recommendation would be to shoot progressive, whichever frame rate you eventually settle on. It is very hard to get a decent conversion from 50i to 60i or the other way, while conversion of progressive material is far easier. You could consider shooting 24P(23.98) and then adding pull up to get to 29.97 and speeding it up by 4% to get 25P, this is quite common practice. I would probably also take into account which country it will be shot in. You will avoid issues with lighting flicker etc if you shoot at the same frequency as the mains electrical supply, so 25P50i for Europe and 30P/60i for the USA.

Thanks for your quick response Alister.
I will be shooting in South Africa so it seems 25p will be the best option (to avoid flicker) and I will advise my client accordingly.
For the US is the conversion from 25p to 30p best done before or after the edit?
Thanks,
Eric

If it's the same edit for both regions I would do it post edit. It should look fine if you do a decent conversion. I use compressor on a mac with the advanced options turned on and adaptive interpolation. Always looks fantastic, you would be hard pushed to know it had been converted.

The UK and US are doing their own different edits from the same footage but I'll advise the US team to do the conversion after. Even though they might already have a preferred workflow for 25p footage.
Thanks for your help.

Good advice)) in situations like this everything should be discussed to prevent from unpredicted and unwished results