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Best settings to export lossless master from FCP7? Professional archive workflow suggestions?
I’ve been working in video for small mostly non-profit organizations for 3 years now and have several projects that I want to archive properly, and put together a portfolio to get into a school.
I’ve media-managed the projects I want to keep onto a RAID1 drive, and want to make a master export/render of each of these projects, that I can use as the source of all my following renders for dvd, internet etc.
What settings should I use for my lossless master? I see the options “uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2”, which sounds like it would be full quality. From searching through threads, people have suggested, “PNG”, “Animation”, and “Apple Intermediate Codec”. I want full quality even if its a big file (most projects are short)
Also, any suggestions for an archive workflow? I’m having a hard time organizing things. Here’s my current thinking anyways.. I have 2 hard drives set up as RAID1, which I plan to store my media managed files as well as a full quality lossless render. Then I guess I’ll have another large 7200rpm hard drive, which I will work on projects from.. And figure out another drive to use Time Machine on.. and backup my Lightroom3 library on..
I’m also very reluctant to throw anything away.. I’m primarily an editor (or is my future career goal), and almost all of my projects are not totally finished because they were made in a tight time frame, so I wonder if there’s pieces I might want when I learn how to finish these projects properly. Maybe cheap slower hard drives to store the bits and pieces?
a web link, article, or any suggestions to how professionals store and archive their work (archival workflow) would be greatly appreciated. I’m afraid of losing good stuff! Sorry if this isn’t the right forum to ask.. I wasn’t really sure.
Thanks a lot!!
Dave Chavinsky
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5 Replies
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Well the best export for the highest quality of your sequence is to select the sequence, then choose file/Export QuickTime Movie… Then in the box that opens choose “Make self contained” and use “Current settings”.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
Current DVD:
https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX – Cinema Displays I have a 22″ that I paid 4k for still working. G4 with Kona SD card, and SCSI card.
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Thanks Jerry,
That’s what I’ve been doing, so I’m glad to have confirmation that this is the best way.
Most of the videos I’ve been making are for a church that has an SD projector, so the settings of the timeline are SD, but the footage is HD. So if I “use current settings”, is my render going to use the SD settings, or will it render it out in full quality? I want the HD for portfolio purposes and to give the church a futureproof copy.
Perhaps my work flow is wrong, and I should edit in an HD sequence. Is “use current settings” the sequence settings?
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Yes, current settings is sequence settings. You’ll have to copy and paste your edit into an HD sequence to have an HD version of it. And since all your clips have been scaled to SD size, you’ll have to unscale them in the HD sequence. Select all, right click, remove attributes, basic motion & distort.
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Down the line then, edit in an HD sequence, and deliver an SD version of that by exporting it using QT conversion to say, ProRes SD.. Then use the method of using current settings for an HD backup of the sequence.
Jerry
Apple Certified Trainer, Producer, Writer, Director Editor, Gun for Hire and other things. I ski. My Blog: https://blogs.creativecow.net/Jerry-Hofmann
Current DVD:
https://store.creativecow.net/p/81/jerry_hofmanns_final_cut_system_setup8-Core 3.0 Intel Mac Pro, Dual 2 gig G5, AJA Kona SD, AJA Kona 2, Huge Systems Array UL3D, AJA Io HD, 17″ MBP, Matrox MXO2 with MAX – Cinema Displays I have a 22″ that I paid 4k for still working. G4 with Kona SD card, and SCSI card.
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That makes sense, I’ll do that in the future.
When I check my sequence settings, I see that in the, Quicktime Video Settings, Apple ProRes 422 is selected as the compressor at a quality of 100%. I think that was default. Should I change it to, “Apple ProRes 422 HQ” for better quality, and is ProRes better than all the other options?
Thanks!
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