FCPX Export Bitrate Poor – How to fix ?

[Jeremy Garchow]

Make a custom setting in Compressor with the bitrate you desire. Then add that Custom settings to FCPX’s Share menu by Adding a Compressor Setting by click Add Destination button and drag “Compressor Setting” over the list on the left. Then choose the preset you made from the next drop down menu. Here’s a picture:

[Soumendra Jena]

Compressor is a feature within FCPX or an extra paid addon ?

[Joe Marler]

[Soumendra Jena] “…sony a7s2 and gh5…exported file is just 29Mbps bitrate which is very low quality, even though my eyes cannot see the downgrade in quality, but I guess Im still losing quality because it doesnt look very very crisp when I watch my videos on 4K monitors or 4K HDR displays.
“
I edit a lot of 4k H264 documentary material from the A7R2, A7R3 and GH5. It’s my impression the default FCPX 4k H264 30 mbps export is pretty good for most cases. OTOH when I’ve compared ProRes 422 to 30 mbps H264, the ProRes version seems a little better (on my 5k iMac screen) but I haven’t studied it on a large 50+ inch screen.

That said, 30 mbps is a little lower than what Youtube recommends for 4k H264 uploads: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?hl=en

As already stated you should take a small piece of the timeline and export it to ProRes 422, then play it back-to-back with the 30 mbps 4k H264 version via computer and HDMI on a large screen — and when viewed at a normal distance.

ProRes is so large it’s probably not feasible to use the entire two hr timeline, but this will show whether the 4k H264 version is visually lower quality.

If there is a significant difference, then you can explore increasing the H264 bit rate via Compressor. If there is not a significant difference (when viewed at normal distance from the screen) then you can be satisfied with the current behavior. If there’s a difference that’s only apparent when viewed two feet from a 50-inch screen, nobody will notice that.

Besides sharpness I also suggest you check difficult encoding cases like moving water, fireworks, camera strobes, etc. Also check single-color gradients like a blue sky or blue underwater ocean scene. There are other aspects to image quality besides sharpness. You can take a screen capture of these and compare the same frame.

[Jeremy Garchow]

In order to make Compressor settings, you must buy Compressor which is $50US from the AppStore.