Change Media Training Toolkit: 9 – Exporting
Here are some basic steps to export your film.
Change Media Training Toolkit: 9. How To Export Video
Basic steps for exporting your final film.
OVERVIEW:
This tutorial covers the basic steps you should follow to ensure you get the best interview possible.
Printable PDF worksheets
Coming soon!
When exporting your film there are a few final, final, final checks you should do to make sure you don’t watch your final export and say to yourself, ‘Damn, I need to go back into FCP to change that now…’
Always ensure all your title cards (people’s names and occupations, used during interview sequences) are correct. Triple-check the spelling of people’s names and make sure their placement is correct and that they fade in and out the way you want them to. This is also where you check if your opening and closing trains (the intro and end plates of your movie) are formatted and displaying correctly, and that they contain all the information you are legally obliged to have them contain (check your contracts and funding agreements if you’re unsure).
The next stop is sound effects. Make sure all your sounds are mixed correctly and are in the right place. The most important thing when mixing sounds is that you want the majority of your film to sit at around a volume of -12dB on your mixer and never to peak higher than -6dB. If someone shouts or a crowd cheers this should be constrained (mixed down) so that it doesn’t peak above -6dB. You’ll have to watch your whole film and keep an eye on your mixing window to see what sounds, if any, peak in the ‘red’ (the flashing red peak indicator of your mixer’s pane, between -6dB and 0dB).
Once this is all done and finalized, hit CMD+R (command+r) to render out any transitions or overlays or any ‘thinking’ Final Cut needs to do before you export. This can save you lots of time when exporting and is a good way to check that everything is appearing and behaving 100% the way you need it to.
Once these checks have all been performed you are ready to export! Under the File tab there is a button that says Export and then an option to ‘Export to QuickTime Movie’. This is the simplest and most reliable way to ensure your video reaches the quality level it needs to so it can be converted and squished and squashed for websites, phones or whatever later.
Once you click Export, a dialogue window will pop open asking you to dictate a few things here and there, the most important of which are file type (which will be dictated by your specific project needs, most likely QuickTime movie will do excellently for this first part as previously mentioned) and then location. Set the location of your film to go into a folder named ‘Exports’ within your project file architecture. In the same folder as ‘Exports’ make another folder called ‘Compressed’. This is where you will eventually keep the variously compressed versions of your originally exported film. Making sense yet?
Once you click OK lots of little pieces of computer will click and whirr and buzz until out pops a shiny piece of media that you made! Congratulations. The next step is to figure out exactly what viewing platform your media is for and to find a free program (such as Mpeg Stream-clip available free here: http://www.squared5.com/) that will painlessly do it for you.
Links:
Mpeg Streamclip:
File Format Database:
This Change Media initiative is proudly supported by the Australian Government, Indigenous Cultural Support, Office for the Arts Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet; and the Australia Council For The Arts Community Partnerships.
Change Media Training Toolkit: 9. Exporting Formats
Covers different formats for compressing video for web, mobile and DVD use.
OVERVIEW:
This tutorial covers the basic steps you should follow to ensure you get the best interview possible.
Printable PDF worksheets
Coming soon!
What file format you export your film will depend on a lot of factors such as where it is going to screen and on what platform (mobile phone, web, TV etc.) There is some more detailed information available concerning file formats under the File Management section of our Community Toolkit or you can visit the website fileinfo.com for more information on every file type under the sun.
Suffice to say the best and easiest approach, for exporting video using Final Cut Pro 7, is to export your sequence as a QuickTime movie; these are high quality video files that can be converted down the track for a plethora of applications (phone, web, TV) using different software.