File size Exporting Issue

[Russell Lasson]

Select something in your timeline and hit “Command 0” on the keyboard. What do your sequence settings say?

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Alvin Thompson]

Hey Russ thanks for getting back this quickly. Since I have Fincal Cut Express and not Pro it doesn’t have the same settings as Pro does. I did what you asked and all I saw as options were: Timeline Options, Render Controls and Track Display.

Al

[Russell Lasson]

What did it say under timeline options? What you’re looking for is a window that says the resolution, frame rate and compressor of the timeline. The window should be called sequence settings. It’s possible that your timeline isn’t set up correctly.

But back to your question, 1920×1020 is a 16:9 resolution. To see the the actual resolution of the file, open it in Quicktime and get info. Under the format section, it should tell you the actual resolution.

And just to help out in the future, when you’re talking about how many pixels high/wide a file is, you should use the term “resolution”. If you talking about how many MB or GB a file is, you should use the term “size”. Your thread title makes it sound like you’re having problems with the amount of Megabytes or Gigabytes of the exported file.

One more thing, Final Cut Express isn’t the right tool to use the Canon 5D Mark IV. You should really be using Final Cut Pro. If you’re only playing around, then do whatever you want, but if you’re hoping to make videos people are going to pay you money for, then you should really bite the bullet and get the Pro version. It will make your life so much easier.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net

[Alvin Thompson]

Hey Russ. You’re right, I’ll need to invest in Pro. I went all over the net and all I’m hearing is get the Pro because having Express is very limited especially when using 5D. There is a way around it but I’m not sure I wanna use it. I read somewhere that using MPEG Streamclip to convert H264 to a DV format. The problem is there are several formats. Eg. Apple DV/DVCPRO-NTSC, Apple DVCPRO50-NTSC, etc. Which to use?

In regards to what you mentioned about finding out what my file is through sequence window. Well, I suspect your not entirely sure what FCE has so I’ll tell you that when I right-click Sequence then clicked on ITEM PROPERTIES. A window pops up and under FORMAT is Frame size as 720×480, compressor is DV/DVCPRO – NTSC, Pixel Aspect NTSC – CCIR 601, Field Dominance is Lower (Even). It included some other stuff as well but these are the main things I’m pointing out. I must tell you that nothing can be edited under this.

I found out how to change my sequence settings but it does not allow me to do half of what FCP can such as making my own EASY SETUP PRESET. Now if I use DV – NTSC the output is automatically 720×480 and no option for 1920×1080. My guess is this is the problem even if I decided to convert.

Sorry for the lengthy reply but I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help.

[Russell Lasson]

I believe that FCE allows for editing 1920×1080 footage using the Apple Intermediate Codec. Since the footage is all at 30fps, you don’t need to worry about the fact that FCE doesn’t support 24P. With a little research, this might work out for you, at least for the short term until you can get FCP.

-Russ

Russell Lasson
Colorist/Digital Cinema Specialist
Color Mill
Salt Lake City, UT
http://www.colormill.net