Thread: Exporting! How? Why?!

Hi everyone,

Need some advice on exporting...

I have footage shot on a Sony F3 (1920, 25f), and I need to export all the footage from Final Cut Pro 7 so the director can view it.

He's got a personal Mac (no FCP) and probably just the standard codecs.

I need to export this out within 1 hour or less, and I've got about half an hour of footage.

My first try I had codec h264, 1920x1080, quality on high, not best. This was going to take over 2 hours to export..


What can I use instead that will speed time up, but keep a good quality? It doesn't have to be 1920 either.



Thanks!


Mac Specs:
2x2.8 ghz quadcore intel
8 gb memory DDR2

Where do you want to dump the edited video when it is complete? Online video? DVD production?

If it's for online, Experiment with the h.264 codec for online publication.

Dump it to compressor, Make a 1 pass mpeg file then bang it onto a DVD.
Yes it won't be a "HD Video" and you'll obviously lose some content to title safe but a straight forward DVD will guarantee he can watch it on anything...even his DVD player! ( Just be sure to test it yourself before you send it to him )

I'd expect an hour long video on a older machine to be left for a period of hours in order to render, especially if it is scaling the video down rather than a straight encode.

With Final Cut Pro 7 I only use Apple Pro Res 422 HQ because it's small for a 1920x1080 frame, running at about 1.5 GB a minute, depending on the streams. Now if he just wants to see the video, you don't have to export as long as you have already logged and transferred the footage. If you find your capture/scratch folder, the footage should all be saved as .mov's.

On my sys. which has the default locations for my files architecture, it's documents>Final Cut Pro Documents>Capture Scratch>*Name of Project*. Now as for codecs, no need to start a flame war but if my director didn't have the codecs that I had I'd be rather livid. Every director I have ever worked with can edit, has edited at one point, and usually has the software, or always has access to it.

If you're worried about some director not being able to view it, open the footage in Quicktime, then File>Save As>HD 480P (Drop menu)>Export.

The 480P setting will work on all newer Macs, all video capable iDevices, and most PC's.