can I export without rendering? Is there quality differences?

[Jeremy Garchow]

If you don’t render, and then you go to export, FCP will render everything and embed it into that exported movie. So your export will take longer than if everything is rendered before hand, but then you have to render ti there anyway so it doesn’t save time there. It’s best to render and then export in my opinion. That way you won’t have to keep rerendering the same stuff every time you export. This method will actually save you time in the long run over the course of multiple exports of the same timeline. As far as quality, there’s no difference.

Make sense?

Jeremy

[Todd Reid]

Thats exactly what I thought.

I ran into a situation with a funky, abnormal resolution at another clients place.
If we render it first, then export, it came out blurry. If we didn’t render prior to exporting, then it was clean.

So I thought I’d see if the cow could shed some light.

thanks!

[Jeremy Garchow]

Where were you watching these movies, in quicktime? Did you have the high quality option enabled?

[Andreas Karoliussen]

Hi Todd,

Your clients abnormality might be his sequence render settings.
And the answer to you question depends on what you are exporting to, the workflow you use and the quality you want.

1) Making a quick DVD for offline screening:
render all in FC – export reference quicktime movie and compress in Compressor using a droplet.

However this gives another contrast range then:
2) Making a DVD with the “send to compressor” option.
which re-renders everything. More accurate Ive heard because you have render and compression in One process.

3) If you are doing a export for Internet or something to send for your graphics department there is no point in rendering it before you are exporting, unless you have to render it anyway because you are going to edit further on.

Nice to now if someone have any other opinions,
Andreas

[Todd Reid]

The file that ended up blurry was exported as a “FCP” quicktime (not conversion)

******by the way******what do you guys call that? I’ve been using the above term and there has to be a better one********

It is then put through flip factory and its destination is the web through their proprietary web streaming player. They are editing in dv, then converting to motion jpeg, in a very weird resolution, I can’t recall, but I’ve never heard of anyone using it. Seemed strange to me, but doesn’t really surprise me.
This place is plagued with “scratch your head” type problems, but I thought I’d see what the cow thought.

I would never use this strategy on my company’s projects, but their check don’t bounce, and their way takes a long time…..and I charge by the hour 😉

Thanks all

[Jeremy Garchow]

[todd reid] “what do you guys call that?”

A reference movie, unless you click the make self-contained box, then it’s a self contained movie.

[todd reid] “The file that ended up blurry was exported as a “FCP” quicktime (not conversion)”

Next time you export a dv movie, open the movie in Quicktime (not FCP), hit apple-j to bring up the properties, select ‘video track’ then choose the high quality box in the lower left hand corner. While still in the Quicktime Player Application, go into the preferences (the one that says preferences and not Quicktime Preferences) and select the little box that says ‘Use high-quality video setting when available”. That way your dv movies won’t be fuzzy. Now, why they do it they way they do might account for it being fuzzy. It seems weird to export to dv, then export to MJPEG then compress for the web. Too many recompressions there. They should just go dv to web, not have an intermediate. DV is beat up enough as it is.

Jeremy