[Tony Colella]

Step 1: Before Editing in Final Cut Pro 7

Use Squared 5 Mpeg Streamclip (it’s FREE) Make sure you also have the playback component installed.

FILE: EXPORT (your footage) TO QUICKTIME:

For HD: Set Compression to either “APPLE PRO RES 422” (Files may be 1 gig per minute) or “Apple Intermediate Codec” (maybe 500 MB per minute)

For Standard: Covert to “Apple Motion Jpeg A”

Check your other settings.

Primarily: Crank the quality to 100%

Frame Size: Unscaled / or match the footage

In Most Cases: Un-check Interlaced Scaling or Click De-interlace

Click: MAKE MOVIE

Step 2: Open Final Cut Pro 7

Drag the converted footage into a new timeline (it must be empty). Final Cut will Ask you if you want to match your sequence settings to the footage. Click Yes.
(Or you can manually set up your sequence in Final Cut.)

If you did it correctly, everything will be rendered already and editing will be like slicing hot butter.

Step 3: When you are done Editing Click File EXPORT: Quicktime Movie.

name it “Tony Colella Rocks – Edit 1” and then SAVE it.

Don’t COVERT IT YET!

Keep this file the same format in case you need to make re-edits later.

You can pull it back in Final Cut and make Edit 2,3,4…12

Step 4: Bring your Finished Export back into STREAMCLIP to covert.

FILE: EXPORT TO MPEG-4

Check your setting again (usually they should match before)

Click LIMIT DATA RATE

(Set this depending on file size VS Quality)

For a High Quality HD MPEG-4 set it to 24000 Kbps
For Smaller File Sizes, aim around: 3000 or 5000 Kbps

You might want to play around with the Data Rate and convert small sections of your video to see what they will look like before converting the whole thing.

You can do that by setting In (press I) and Out (press O) points in Streamclip.

Step 5. Read Your Bible Every day (KJV), lest you fall into sin 😀

– Tony Colella