How do I compress a file to be under 300mb = Please Help?

C

Cieloent

Well-known member
I have a 5 minute plus file exported from FCP which came out to about 1.6gb. The quality looks great but the file is too big for me to load on many sites and to easily send to multiple people.


I have seen Music Video projects uploaded to vimeo and countless other sites where the users files are in between 225mb - 300mb .


When I export out of FCP I used 1920x1080p , best quality and left everything else at automatic. I just went in there again and lowered the resolution to 1280x720 and put good quality but the file is still like around 500mb now.


Basically my question to the community is how can I make a file under 300mb and not have the quality ruin on me? What is the secret? Someone please help!


THANK YOU
 
No one , anyone?


What are the proper steps to export from FCP. I use quicktime as I have no idea how to use Compressor.
 
I don't usually use compressor either but if you happen to have sorenson squeeze, it works great. I can take a screen grab of the settings I use, I can get my files to around a tenth of the size of the prores file that I export from FCP and still look VERY good.
 
File > Export > Quicktime Conversion .... then Settings > do custom aspect 1280X720, then you can limit data rate, or reduce quality, or choose a different codec like MPEG4, change your audio settings, use AAC, 44.1, 16 bit, maybe 64kbps?.

Just play with it until you get a size, unfortunately it does not estimate the size until after you render.
 
What was the editing codec, and what was the exported delivery codec?

h.264 is about the best delivery codec for places such as YouTube and is a great accomodation of size and quality.
 
Try exporting an H.264 file at 720p with a restricted bit-rate of 6,000 kb/s, and see how that looks and how big the file is.

If it's too big, try exporting it again at 5,000 kb/s.

You could also set the audio at 44.1 kHz / 128 kb/s.
 
I figured it out, but not sure if it was the correct way. All I did was lower the quality conversion to medium as opposed to high/best. I really seen no loss of quality in the video so I'm happy.

I'm sure something must have got degraded but I can't tell?
 
You can achieve a similar result by changing the bit-rate settings. I've not used FCP for a while but for h.264, or any other variable bitrate codec, you should have options to adjust the minimum, maximum and average bitrates.

If you wanted to be really precise you could figure out how many kilobits you can fit into the file size you need, then divide that by the length of your clip (in seconds) to come up with a rough estimate of what your averate bitrate needs to be.
 
I spent quite some time experimenting with export and compression settings, I export from FCP as ProRes 422, self contained, than export it as h.264 using Compressor. I can post my compressor settings later since I'm not on that mac right now.
Also, it would help people to help you if you give some more details, what was your editing codec, and what delivery codec is required- what do you want to do with your video..
 
Interface said:
I spent quite some time experimenting with export and compression settings, I export from FCP as ProRes 422, self contained, than export it as h.264 using Compressor. I can post my compressor settings later since I'm not on that mac right now.
Also, it would help people to help you if you give some more details, what was your editing codec, and what delivery codec is required- what do you want to do with your video..
Click to expand...

Files are from Canon t2i converted to pro res. My output is h.264 for internet use such as youtube / vimeo.
 
I export it as high quality h.264 - around 6000 bit rate, 720p, square pixel, multi pass encoding...
Exported file is about 12x smaller then the original prores. If you need to squeeze it even more try lowering the bitrate.
 
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