Compression for best QUALITY out of FCP
by Chris Amato
on
May 19, 2008 at 12:43:02 am
I've tried exporting out of Final Cut Pro to Quicktime MPEG-4 and the quality is horrible. I mean it's visible but it just stands no chance as a professional video. The timeline sequence in FCP is excellent but somewhere in the compression it gets jacked. Any ideas that I'm not seeing?
Is there something I can do with Compressor 1.2.1 that would be more useful?
Re: Compression for best QUALITY out of FCP by Chris Amato on May 19, 2008 at 7:15:21 am
I'm using a G4 dual 1.25 GHz PowerPC. 1MB L3 cache per processor.
I'm simply exporting out of FCP by File>Export>Using QuickTime Conversion. Format>MPEG-4. Use>Default Setting. I read that these were the optimal settings for web based video out of FCP. It doesn't seem to be so though.
Do you know what I can change to produce a respectable looking video? I haven't used Compressor 1.2.1 very much and I'm not sure whether I need to use it to have better quality. Eventually I will need a DVD and I may use DVD studio Pro but am still debating IDVD due to the learning curve and my time constraints. But that's my next task.
Re: Compression for best QUALITY out of FCP by Craig Seeman on May 19, 2008 at 12:30:44 pm
Default to MPEG 4 in Quicktime is 352x288 256kbps or something to that effect.
You need to define your target. What are you using this file for? Web viewing? How fast will be the typical targeted viewer's Internet speed and computer type/age? Will they be on CableModem and have Quicktime 7 for example. If you have to decide all that before any setting can be determined as optimal.
An 7 year old computer with Windows 2000 on slow DSL in an office that blocks Quicktime will need something different than a 2 year old computer with CableModem and Quicktime 7. If you target the lowest common denominator (everyone) you will target fairly low data rate and codec.
