1920 x 1080 exporting to 1280 x 720p ?
- Thread starter Cieloent
- Start date
Here is the problem. I am creating 4-5 minute projects and when I export them from FCP they are easily over 1gb.
I am exporting using H.264 and the highest possible settings in quicktime conversion for the best quality. I do not want to lower the quality so I though about lowering the resolution?
Does anyone know exact settings I should use so I wont have files that are so huge and still maintain excellent quality?
Thanks
I think your best bet should be this:
Export a "current settings" out of FCP - which will be the full resolution, best quality output. I'm assuming you converted your footage to some variant of PRORES, so your exported file will be as PRORES 1920x1080.
Then use Apple Compressor to convert the file to h264. Download and unzip the attachment on this message. The attachment is a ".settings" file, which you can drop'n drop into the "settings" area of Apple Compressor. This will create a template inside Compressor called "h264_half_size" which is going to do a high quality 2-pass h264 conversion at exactly half your source resolution (960x540). In my personal experience I've found this to be a good enough trade off size/resolution. Using these settings you should be able to get a 5 minute clip in the realm of 200MB (educated guess). You can tweak the resolution/bitrate/etc in compressor to further suit your needs.
You could easily create a few variations of this compression setting at different resolutions/bitrate and let it run through the night, then view the results when you wake up and see which settings best matched your personal taste.
Note: the .settings file will likely only work if you are using Final Cut Studio 3 (latest version)
Export a "current settings" out of FCP - which will be the full resolution, best quality output. I'm assuming you converted your footage to some variant of PRORES, so your exported file will be as PRORES 1920x1080.
Then use Apple Compressor to convert the file to h264. Download and unzip the attachment on this message. The attachment is a ".settings" file, which you can drop'n drop into the "settings" area of Apple Compressor. This will create a template inside Compressor called "h264_half_size" which is going to do a high quality 2-pass h264 conversion at exactly half your source resolution (960x540). In my personal experience I've found this to be a good enough trade off size/resolution. Using these settings you should be able to get a 5 minute clip in the realm of 200MB (educated guess). You can tweak the resolution/bitrate/etc in compressor to further suit your needs.
You could easily create a few variations of this compression setting at different resolutions/bitrate and let it run through the night, then view the results when you wake up and see which settings best matched your personal taste.
Note: the .settings file will likely only work if you are using Final Cut Studio 3 (latest version)
What are you exporting the projects for? The internet? You really don't need to use the Best Quality setting if you're just exporting for the internet. The data rate will be too high to be of use (like 17mbps or higher).
I uploaded a 1080p clip to YouTube that I had restricted to 12mbps, and YouTube re-encoding the clip at around 6.5mbps.
Experiment using the Restricted Data Rate option until you find a balance between quality and size that you want.
Just changing the Quality setting from Best to High will dramatically reduce your file-size.
Yes, for the internet. So youtube compresses the files even more? Interesting, thanks for the help!