Export just some Roles to MP4 (without Compressor and ProRes Master)?

[Michael Hancock]

You’re not missing anything. You can’t export an mo4 with only some roles. It’s all or nothing. You have to export to something like Prores first then recompress that.

—————-
Michael Hancock
Editor

[Ronny Courtens]

Actually you are asking two different questions. The first question is:

Am I missing something or is it impossible to export a subset of Roles directly to a delivery format, skipping an intermediary ProRes and Compressor conversion? How do you guys do this?

Yes this is perfectly possible, and it’s actually very easy.

This is a timeline with Czech and English subtitles + Czech and English audio mix. I have created a separate Role for the Czech titles and the English titles, and a separate Subrole for the Czech mix and English mix (just to show that this works with Roles as well with Subroles):

To export to a delivery format with only the Video, the Czech titles and the Czech Mix: choose Share > Master File and press the Settings button. In the Settings window, choose the export codec (I have chosen H.264) and then select Roles As Multitrack Quicktime movie. Then just choose the Video Roles (Video + CZECH SUBS) and Audio Roles (CZECH MIX) you want to include in the export and you’re done:

The second question is:

I want to export MP4/M4V (“Apple Devices”) in one of the languages, say, English (=a single MP4/M4V file with English graphics and English VO)

Exporting a master file based on Roles directly to MP4 is currently not an option. You can only export based on Roles using a QT wrapper (Master File > Audio and Video) or an MXF wrapper (Master File > MXF).

So, in your case, you can export an H.264 delivery file based on Roles straight from the timeline (no need to create an intermediary file or use Compressor), or you can export a high-quality master file based on Roles from the timeline and convert the master file to MP4.

– Ronny

[Jiri Fiala]

Thanks Ronny!

I’ve actually forgot to add one CRUCIAL point – I know I can export to multitrack MOV with H264 compression (i.e. your first tip).

BUT!

The resulting MOV file is largely incompatible with most video players (= something a client would actually use), as well as typical web video servers. It plays correctly (with all audio tracks) in Quicktime Player and Quicklook, I can import it to NLEs, but VLC, Youtube, mplayerx and every other app including Adobe Media Encoder just plays the first audio track.

In your case that doesn’t matter as there is only one audio track (a proper mixdown), but sometimes I don’t have or need that, I just need to export the thing with a specific language VO and probably a couple of music and SFX tracks. And that’s still seems impossible without going to ProRes first and reencoding from there.

[Craig Seeman]

Try playing it in the free version of Telestream Switch which is cross platform.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Jiri Fiala] “And that’s still seems impossible without going to ProRes first and reencoding from there”

Yes. It’s is impossible to directly encode to MP4 with selected Roles from FCPX at the moment.

[Richard Taylor]

Not an elegant solution but in the timeline index, search for the role(s) you DON’T want to export in the clip index.

All of the clips with that role (or roles) will be highlighted. Hit the V key to disable all of them and then export.

Disabled clips won’t be exported.

======
Richard

[Jiri Fiala]

Yep, I do that, but it’s inelegant and very prone to errors ☹ thanks anyway. I filed a request, as I already did many times before.