Exporting a High Quality Source File Using Final Cut Pro

Apple's Final Cut Pro is one of the most widely used post-production and editing tools on the market. It's a great program to use for creating a high quality source file for the video that you can upload into your Video Cloud account. This article will cover the basic export settings as well as some tips and best practices to avoid any issues when you upload your exported file. While the specific screenshots and steps described in this article relate to Final Cut Pro, many of the settings and suggestions are applicable to other programs.

• Exporting a high quality source file
• Video settings
  
• Export size settings
• Sound settings
• Tips

Exporting a high quality source file

We won't cover how to capture and edit your video in this article. Let's assume you have a complete Sequence in Final Cut Pro that you are happy with. Once your video has been created, it's time to export. In Final Cut Pro:

1. Select File > Export > Using Quicktime Conversion.
2. In the Format drop-down menu, select Quicktime Movie, then click the Options button. This brings up the Movie Settings dialog box:

In the Movie Settings dialog, you can modify:

• Video settings
• Export size
• Sound settings

We recommend that you ignore the Filter... button. It is best to apply any filters in the editing and post-production of your videos, not during export.

Video compression settings

In the Video section of the Movie Settings dialog, click the Settings... button and set the options on this screen to the settings below:

Here are the reasons behind the compression settings we recommend when you export your video. Read more about video settings.

Type (Codec)

Brightcove recommends using H.264 as your video codec.

Frame Rate

Select Current to use the same frame rate as your source. A frame rate of 25 or 30 fps is pretty standard.

Key Frames

Key frames are reference frames and are used when seeking (scrubbing) within the video. If you set key frames equal to the frame rate, you will get a key frame every second, which is a good setting for most purposes.

Data Rate

Set the data rate based on the highest quality rendition you want to deliver. When Video Cloud transcodes your source file, the renditions can't be any higher quality than the source you provide. However, there's not much point in uploading a file with an excessively high data rate. The higher the data rate, the larger the resulting file, and very large file sizes result in increased upload and transcode times. If you are using Video Cloud's default transcode settings, a data rate of 3000 kbps will result in high quality renditions.

One Pass vs. Two Pass Encoding

It's general practice that two-pass produces a better transcode than one-pass. However, this does take up a lot more time to perform than a one-pass encode. Depending on factors like the amount of motion in the video, you may not see any visible improvement in quality with two-pass encoding rather than one-pass. If you find yourself frustrated by how long these exporting processes may be taking, then take the time to perform a comparison test. Take the same video and export it as both one-pass and two-pass, then examine the two exports for any differences in quality. Be sure to keep an eye out during any transitions (like cross-fades) or high motion areas. If you find little to no difference in video quality, then you can minimize your encoding time by going with one-pass encoding.

Once you are finished with the video compression settings, click OK to return to the Movie Settings dialog.

Export size settings

In the Movie Settings dialog, click the Size... button to bring up the Export Size Settings dialog:

The Export Size Settings need to match the settings to your own Sequence (including especially the aspect ratio), rather than the settings specified in the above screenshot. In the Dimensions drop-down menu, select the Current or Custom options to help you export to the correct resolution if the pre-determined setting is not already available in the list.

If you are working with content that was shot on tape, then we highly recommend you to select the Deinterlace Source Video checkbox at this stage to avoid any sort of interlacing effects on your Video Cloud content. If your content was shot to a digital format and is not currently interlaced, then do not select this checkbox.

Once you are finished with the video compression settings, click OK to return to the Movie Settings dialog.

Sound settings

In the Movie Settings dialog, under Sound, click the Settings... button and match the options on this screen to the settings below:

Click OK to head back to the Movie Settings dialog box, and click OK one more time to head back to the Save dialog. You are now ready to save the file to your computer and begin the Exporting process. 

Tips

Create a profile in Compressor

If you are using Final Cut Pro to export multiple videos for uploading to Video Cloud, you may want to use Apple Compressor (a component application in Final Cut Studio) to create and save a Quicktime pre-sets export profile. This lets you use the same compression settings without needing to select them each time.

Remove In & Out Points Before Exporting

We have been able to reproduce issues when exporting video in Final Cut Pro while 'In' and 'Out' Markers were placed inside of the Sequence while exporting your file. The issue is that 2 different sets of 'duration' metadata is being written to the file. One set is written to the video track, and another written to the audio track. This causes the Video Cloud player to read one set of metadata upon upload (the correct metadata), but the Adobe Flash Media Server (FMS) to read the In/Out set of duration metadata upon playback, which is usually much shorter in length. To avoid the issue, make sure to remove any Markers from the Sequence before exporting.

Check your metadata

If you are interested in checking your metadata after exporting, a good tool to use is MediaInfo, which you can download from SourceForge.

After you install MediaInfo, open the program, and use File > Open to open one of your video files in MediaInfo. You can then select View > Text to view the video's metadata. You will see duration metadata for both the Video Track and the Audio Track. These should match. If they don't, there will be a problem upon playback.