Exporting Self-Contained Quicktime File.

[David Roth weiss]

Export>>Quicktime Movie using current settings — and check the box Make Self Contained. That’s as good as it gets. Period, end of story.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Andrew Johnston]

Great, thank you so much.

However, please correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t this make the file I’m creating a reference file and I’ll still need all my raw footage and stuff for the file to work? because i need to throw this file onto a hardrive and bring it to my client’s computer and can’t bring all my hardrives.

OR… Does checking the box “make self-contained” fix this problem and meshes it all together for me?

And last but not least… I remember in my older post yo mentioned that using compressor is a lot better than using Final Cut Pro. Is this only when I’m compressing and using something like H.264 or should I use COmpressor for creating my Self-contained quicktime as well?

thanks for all your help and speedy response.

[David Roth weiss]

Andrew,

The above exports a master file, and it does it very quickly as there is no encoding, just an exact duplicate of your timeline. However, it is not meant for Web distribution etc., as it will be entirely too large, but it will be the very best file to encode to any other file type for Web, DVD, client distribution etc. Do you get that?

With regard to encoding for the Web and client distribution, you need to spell out precisely what your purpose is and then we can help you to sort out exactly what you need to do in that case so you have workflow that you understand and that you can repeat.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[David Roth weiss]

[Andrew Johnston] “Does checking the box “make self-contained” fix this problem and meshes it all together for me? “

Self Contained means ready to rumble anywhere. I advise all of my clients and students to completely avoid making “reference files,” where the self contained box isn’t checked, because they are not tagged and because they can cause huge problems if reused and if any changes are made in the underlying timeline or files.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Andrew Johnston]

Okay, Basically right now I am not worried about Web, DVD, or anything (I will be once i get this right)… but right now I’m seriously just going to bring my laptop over and sit with my client at his desk and play the 1 hour and 30 minute video. Then when he likes it I’ll come back and burn dvds and prepare segments for the web.

I understand that a self-contained quicktime is the best possible quality and also a very large file but not intended for web and dvd…. HOWEVER…. Will it playback fine on my computer when i bring my laptop over to him and play it?

Because thats all I’m worried about right now- playing back the best possible quality video file for him. AT the same time, the video file i create HAS to be able to playback independently, as i will not be able to bring with me the 6 Lacie hardrives that all my raw footage and editing capture scratches are spread out on.

I know if i exported as uncompressed the darn thing would not playback on my laptop… if this happens with a self-contained quicktime then forget it, i need something that plays properly.

How big of a file are we talking? could it get as big as 100GB?

[Steve Eisen]

We are talking about a “SELF-CONTAINED” movie not a “reference” movie. That is all you need. Period. Just like David said, it does not get any easier. Yes, the file will be large. Very large.

What I would suggest you do with your project is consolidate your media onto 1 hard drive. Six drives is a lot to work with. If making a self-contained movie is difficult, using media manager could be a challenge for you. I say open up the help file and read the step by step instructions. There is even an online tutorial in iTunes from MacBreak Studio.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Tom Matthies]

You also don’t mention which codec you used for editing. Make sure that the people that are getting the file have the same codecs available for playback. Many codecs are included with FCP but aren’t normally available on machines without FCP. Just a thought…
Tom

[Nicole Haddock]

It’s hard to say if it will playback flawlessly on your laptop. What’s the codec of your footage? Is it DVCProHD? 8 bit? 10bit? Etc? And without that knowledge, it’s also impossible to say how big the exported quicktime will be, but I would expect 90GB+ at least.

If you have the time, I think probably the best and easiest workflow is the following-
1- Go buy an Elgato Turbo h.264 – https://www.elgato.com/elgato/na/mainmenu/products/Accessories/Turbo264/product1.en.html – Some stores stock them, and the website will tell you if that’s the case, otherwise, just get one. It’s the best $100 doo-dad you can get.

2- Export a reference movie of your timeline (counter intuitive to what I’ve said in the past, but hold on)

3- Take that into Turbo, squish it down to an h.264 with specs to your choosing. The Turbo speeds up h.264 compression. Don’t worry about showing him the best quality video. Your laptop only has screen space for so much HD video. As long as the audio is good, your frate rate is what you shot it at, you can probably squeeze it down to a 720 resolution of some sort.

4- Bring that to your client review. Should play back no problem on your laptop.

5- When all is said and done, the revisions are in, etc, THEN export a self-contained quicktime from FCP. It will be huge. Buy a new drive. Export to that. THAT is your show master. Use that for all future compressions. Dunk it to tape if you can so you have it on something more reliable than a hard drive.

So yeah, you’ll have spent between 2-500 for the final exports of the show (turbo + drive) but you’ll have it, in all it’s uncompressed glory, and you’ll have the Turbo, which if this is how you normally do client reviews, will pay for itself in the first 10 minutes of your review.

Just my .02 however 🙂

[Robin Rudy]

Hello,

This thread has been VERY helpful.

So, if you could please confirm: delivering a “SELF-CONTAINED” movie out of FCP via Export>>Quicktime Movie using current settings is the Best Way and Really Only Way to deliver a Master QT to a client?

I was taught and worked with folks who noted that it is best to also deliver an 8 bit uncompressed QT but I see that David Ross Weiss also noted in another post that:

…Exporting a DV timeline as 8-bit uncompressed will not improve your video quality. It will however keep your text and graphics from suffering DV compression. Your video will never get any better by uprezing, it will just get bigger or the file size will get bigger, period.

Thanks very much for double clarifying,
RR

MacBook Pro / Intel Core 2 Duo / 2.2 GHz /
2 GB memory / 800 MHz / FCP 5.1

[David Roth weiss]

[Robin Rudy] “I was taught and worked with folks who noted that it is best to also deliver an 8 bit uncompressed QT”

Robin,

Video recorded using the DV codec isn’t ever going to get better than its original quality simply by exporting or transcoding it to a better codec, the file size will just get bigger, but the quality stays precisely the same. If things worked that way we’d all shoot on VHS tape and just transcode that to a better codec. But, it doesn’t work that way — that would be akin to “alchemy,” in which ancient chemists tried (and never succeeded) to turn lead into gold.

Those who suggested that you create an 8-bit uncompressed QT were most likely mastering to Digibeta, because it is a more robust tape format. Or, as I mentioned in the earlier posted that you quoted before, they might have gone that route to protect their text and graphics form the ravages of DV compression.

In order to reap the rewards of the 8-bit codec for text and graphics you can’t simply export to the better codec, you must first change the compressor in the sequence settings to 8-bit uncompressed, then re-render the entire sequence, then export.

Got it?

David

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.