[ This article was first published in the April, 2009, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe.
Updated Feb. 10, 2011. ]
Kevin Stirling asks (and I’m paraphrasing his question here):
Larry, what’s the best way to export a video from Final Cut for a DVD?
Larry replies: There are three possible ways to export your project:
QuickTime Conversion uses the codecs (compression software) that ships with QuickTime. While this isn’t bad, it isn’t the best either. QuickTime Conversion is neither particularly fast nor does it create particularly small file sizes. For this reason, I don’t recommend it — with ONE exception: creating H.264 movies.
Based on the testing I’ve done, creating H.264 movies using Compressor or using Export > QuickTime Conversion yields the same results — provided you aren’t doing any transcoding (converting from one video format, say HD, to another, like SD).
Using Compressor always takes longer than real-time. And, with one exception, yields the same quality as exporting as a QuickTime movie. Based on what I have been told, the benefit of going directly to Compressor is that if you have created a Motion project using 32-bit float space for your calculations, your Motion projects will look slighting better when you go directly into compression without first exporting.
However, if you create your Motion projects using the same video codec as your Final Cut project, you don’t get this benefit.
QuickTime Movie is both the fastest – always faster than real-time, assuming that all rendering is complete – and highest quality. For that reason, I recommend this option. Make sure Settings are set to Current Setting and you’ll get quality equal to your video format for export.
By the way, there are two types of QuickTime movies:
A self-contained movie contains all your audio, fully mixed, all your render files and all your video files and collects them all into one gigantic file.
A reference movie contains all your audio, fully mixed, with pointers that POINT to all the render and video files on your system.
Reference movies export about 20 times faster than self-contained movies and are also about 20 times smaller. If all you need to do is create a high-quality movie that you are immediately going to compress, a reference movie is perfect.
On the other hand, if you are going to:
then you will need to create self-contained QuickTime movies.
Here’s an article that explains this further: Exporting Project Files for DVD
UPDATE – April 2, 2009
Rick Lavon adds:
I think you forgot one crucial piece of info regarding the pros and cons of exporting thru QT, FCP and Compressor. With Compressor you can take advantage of the QMaster Cluster feature. My workflow has been to create a QT Reference movie, bring that into Compressor, and use the Cluster setting you can create thru the system preferences.
It’s a fairly simple setup procedure yet the benefits are dramatic. This speeds up my encoding by almost 3x…not too shabby when you are encoding a DVD of a 1/2 hour or more. The disadvantages of the other two methods are:
1) QT Export- you can’t easily do batch encodings of multiple sequences
2) FCP Export- You lock up your FCP system for the length of the encode.
Using Compressor frees you up to continue editing AND lets you do batch encoding. Heck, it’ll even email you when it’s done…
Larry replies: Rick, I am hearing a lot of complaints about QMaster recently and no longer recommend it for regular production. I am delighted this is working for you.
UPDATE – FEB. 10, 2011
A DIFFERING OPINION ON EXPORTING
Alexander Kallas takes exception to something I wrote:
Larry, in this article you write:
Using Compressor always takes longer than real-time. And, with one exception, yields the same quality as exporting as a QuickTime movie. Based on what I have been told, the benefit of going directly to Compressor is that if you have created a Motion project using 32-bit float space for your calculations, your Motion projects will look slighting better when you go directly into compression without first exporting.
However, if you create your Motion projects using the same video codec as your Final Cut project, you don’t get this benefit.
I beg to differ. If you have graphics or effects created in Motion, then you are better off exporting a self-contained QT movie for Compressor.
Compressor ignores the FCP sequence settings and converts the raw data from the [Motion project] directly to the format you have chosen in Compressor.
Problems with pixel aspect ratios can occur when the sequence contains computer generated graphics or titles. Looking forward to your thoughts.
Larry replies: While you are correct, prior to Final Cut 7 I never found the improvement in quality to be worth all the extra time it took to export and compress the file.
The rules changed, however, with Final Cut 7. Now, Sending to Compressor is a background activity, which means that your system is not tied up during the export.
If you have a Final Cut Pro project that contains Motion projects, especially Motion projects created using gradients and blend modes, this option is worth exploring.
