Compressing FCP file to 500mb Quicktime Movie

[scouser75]

Guys,

I have a major problem. I need to compress my FCP project to a 500mb Quicktime movie.

It's a ProRes422 project, and the length of the film is 26 minutes, with minimal cross dissolves and one 2 minute audio track.

I've Exported as Quicktime Movie and amended the settings to Least and still I'm getting a 900mb file.

What else can I do? I've tried m4v but the quality was atrocious.

 

[ColdCase]

You may have better luck and control using handbrake. When FCP is not giving me something directly I like, I export the video as a master file and then use handbrake to compress. Usually one of the presets work.

I seem to get smaller videos when I share it to mail.

You may never get 25 minutes of HD video to look great in a 500 MB file. Depending on the source, but 25minute of 720p is roughly 15-20 GBs of raw video. 1080 much more.

But, in my experience, handbrake produces that best looking highly compressed movies.

 

[scouser75]

Hi mate, thanks for your reply.

I don't have handbrake. But do have MPEG STreamclip. But have no idea how to use it.

I'll give Handbrake a go.

 

[ColdCase]

Handbrake is free and produces better looking compressed video, but it still may not be good enough. You can play a bit with the quality sliders, but its more of a trial and error process.

 

[scouser75]

Thanks mate.

I also have compressor, if that would be better than all of the above!

 

[ColdCase]

Compressor's results will be about the same as FCP. Handbrake produces better looking video at higher compression rates. One of handbrake's ATV presets should get you close. Most of my hour long 720p HD videos compress to 500 MB +/- 100 using the ATV3 preset... and they look great even on a 60 inch TV. Video with less motion will be smaller size than those with more motion and scene changes.

 

[kohlson]

You'll need VLC to run with handbrake, too. Awesome program. I would just take the recommended presets and run the QT movie through it, and see where that gets you. Probably what you want. But if not there are lots of controls. I don't think I saw if this needed to be 1080 or 720 or ...

 

[scouser75]

Thanks guys for all the helpful answers. I'm currently running one more try on compressor and then it's over to Handbrake.

 

[BeechFlyer]

I also have compressor, if that would be better than all of the above!

If you do decide to use Compressor, a bitrate of 2.5 mb/sec will result in approx. 500MB for your 26 minute video. You can enter that bitrate in Compressor.

Is your video HD? Then don't expect magic at that bitrate. For standard definition, it should provide decent quality.

- Martin

 

[scouser75]

If you do decide to use Compressor, a bitrate of 2.5 mb/sec will result in approx. 500MB for your 26 minute video. You can enter that bitrate in Compressor.

Is your video HD? Then don't expect magic at that bitrate. For standard definition, it should provide decent quality.

- Martin

Hi Martin, thanks for the tips. But for the life of me, I just can't seem to figure out where I would change the bitrate.

I'm going to be a pain in the rear and ask if you could please give me a step by step guide on how to do the whole process.

Currently I'm exporting to compressor directly from FCP7. And then applying the H.264. Going into Inspector. And there I get stuck.

 

[BeechFlyer]

I'm going to be a pain in the rear and ask if you could please give me a step by step guide on how to do the whole process.

Currently I'm exporting to compressor directly from FCP7. And then applying the H.264. Going into Inspector. And there I get stuck.

I don't have the "old" Compressor (part of the old Final Cut Studio, with FCP 7) anymore, but I vaguely remember how to do it.

Look at this website:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/ipad_video_encoding_taylor.html

The second screenshot shows a dialog from within Compressor titled "Inspector". There's a field called "Bit Rate", and to the right of it you can enter a number. Enter 2500 for your desired file size.

The example is for an iPad destination; you'd be better off with a generic QuickTime .mov file. Use H.264 encoding.

I hope this helps!

- Martin

 

[scouser75]

Thanks Martin, I'll have a look at that later tonight and then give it a try, whilst crossing all my fingers and toes!

Oh, and forgot to mention that I converted to a Quicktime Movie and the file size was approximately 55gb!!

Also, is there a way of changing the ProRes422 to compress to 720 rather than 1080?

 

[BeechFlyer]

You can resize the output to 720 during the export with Compressor. It can be set using one of the other icons in the top row of that Inspector window I pointed you to.

Also, just for the sake of clarity, ProRes422 is the codec for your project, but to export your movie to a file of 500 MB you'll have to use H.264 or something similar. ProRes422 files are way bigger.

- Martin

 

[scouser75]

Yup. It took me a while to figure out the codec thing but I got there a few years ago. But my apologies, what I meant to ask was - is there a way to directly from FCP7 Export to H.264 and resize to 720?

I need to find out what the original codec was and why the person I'm editing for converted to ProRes422!

 

[BeechFlyer]

I'll have a look at that later tonight and then give it a try, whilst crossing all my fingers and toes!

Any luck?

 

[scouser75]

Any luck?

Hi Martin, apologies for my late reply. I have been all over the place these last few days!

Firstly, a massive thank you to you, ColdCase and kohlson for all your help and advice.

I finally managed to get the file size down to 499MB. Unfortunately, and as expected, the final video was totally un-viewable - pixelated, colours bleeding, faces unrecognisable etc. But that's what you get for such a mega compression, I guess!

The original project was shot on a Sony RX100 3, file format XAVCS 60P 50M. The person who shot it then converted it from MP4 to ProRes 422 from which I edited on FCP7.

Once I finished editing, I exported it as a QuickTime H.264, which gave me a file size of 56GB.

The person then asked that they also wanted the file converted to ProRes422 HQ @ 25fps. So, from FCP I exported it to this format and got an end file size of 38GB. Surely the ProRes422HQ file should have given me a larger file size than the QuickTime H.264, shouldn't it?

In future, should I ask for files to be converted to ProRes422LT, which will give me a much smaller file size. And then if a ProRes422HQ is required I can export is accordingly?

PS In this project, I imported the ProRes422 files into my FCP project. Would it have been better to have used the original XAVCS files and Log and Transferred them into the project as ProRes422LT?