Final Cut Pro. Export using QT or Compressor?

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Steve,
The size of the resulting file will depends of the codec you are using, whatever the application you use to export.
You can get smaller files by using more compression or reducing the size of the picture, but of course you
won’t have the same quality/size master for the future.

[Steve Hudson] ” however the MOV file size is very large when I do this and is so prohibitive.”
With the actual price of storage this sounds like a joke.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Steve Hudson]

Hi R,

Thanks for that.

Yes I understand this point, however I’m interested in whether or not Compressor will do a superior job exporting a QT (mov) file than going directly from FCP to a QT movie (regardless of which codec I choose as an export).

I imagine it would do, due to this being the main purpose of Compressor. I’m interested in the best settings to get a reasonable size file through Compressor as the export option.

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated.

LS

[Rafael Amador]

Hi Steve,
For exporting a movie with the same parameters of your FC sequence, there is no point to go to Compressor.
Compressor will be OK if you need to resize, de-interlace, change the time-base or to transcode.

[Steve Hudson] “I imagine it would do, due to this being the main purpose of Compressor. I’m interested in the best settings to get a reasonable size file through Compressor as the export option.”
Again, that depends of what you want that file for.
If you want a master that you may want to tweak in the future, export to the original format or better. Do it from FC.
if you want a lighter file, try H264. makes very small files keeping very good picture, but is not the most adequate for future re-processing.
Cheers,
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Chris Wiggles]

[Steve Hudson] “Hi R,

Thanks for that.

Yes I understand this point, however I’m interested in whether or not Compressor will do a superior job exporting a QT (mov) file than going directly from FCP to a QT movie (regardless of which codec I choose as an export).

I imagine it would do, due to this being the main purpose of Compressor. I’m interested in the best settings to get a reasonable size file through Compressor as the export option.

Thanks for your reply, much appreciated.

LS”

Your question is a little nonsensical.

If you do a self-contained Quicktime export, it is simply editing all the footage together as it appears in your timeline as a single standalone movie, using the exact same settings of whatever your content is. If you’re using apple-pro-res for instance it will simply remain the same. This is what you should archive, using the original video quality. And given the cost of storage, this should not at all be prohibitive, given you obviously need WAY more than that for all the raw footage which you have edited together which you now intend to trash, even with HD content.

Then, with this unaltered file, you can use compressor or whatever compression software of your choice to create new, compressed versions as necessary scaled to whatever resolutions and bitrates you require.

You can also compress directly out of final cut, but then you won’t have the full-quality original, you will only have the compressed copy. You do NOT want to use this as your archive unless you just don’t care about the quality and just want to have some copy of it hanging around for kicks and giggles.

So most people will do as I describe, export a full-sized archive of the finished movie. And obviously it would make sense to archive that in more than one place for redundancy. Then compress as necessary from there for whatever distribution format is required as needed. If for some reason you really didn’t want to keep the original file, you could just delete it. But I can’t fathom why you would want to do that.

Regards,
Chris