I’ve got a Final Cut Pro movie. It’s about 1.6 gigs and I need to figure out how to convert it to a more compressed format so I can upload it to Youtube for someone. I edited and finished it on FCP 3.
Any ideas? I’ve never tried such a thing before, and now need to do a few of these. I did open it in Quicktime, but I cannot SAVE it as a small Quicktime movie.
Cartooniverse
You just need to figure out a way to convert it into a much smaller video file… keep in mind YouTube limits videos to 10 minutes, so if its longer you have to cut it into several small movies.
For the conversion I use FFMPEGX. It converts to/from many, many formats… a different compressor, size, bitrate, frame rate, or a combination of any of those should work. In my experience YouTube can handle/convert just about anything, so as long as its less than 100 megs and looks good on your computer, it can go to YouTube.
I use MP4, 640X480, 15 fps. Its always worked for me.
Dr. Divx is a decent little app that will make your video smaller and still keep some good quality.
ETA: Wait, are you on a Mac or PC?
Wait, I guess it doesn’t matter. Here is the download page with both Windows and Mac OSX versions.
Aside from using a higher compression and using a different codec, take a look at the youtube upload hints:
Supported YouTube file formats - YouTube Help (note the 100Mb / 10 min limit)
It’s probably useless to upload anything bigger than 640x480, and if you’re not too worried about image quality, you could even go for 320x240 directly. Possibly also reduce the frame rate to 15fps if your movie still looks good at that rate. Scale down before compressing, it should safe a lot of time.
For the record, I use mencoder create the final movie. It can do almost anything you want, but be prepared to search the web and documentation before you find the right switches to use.
I’m on a Mac, OS-X 10.4.11. I didn’t know Final Cut Pro operated on Windows OS…
Thanks for the tips. Sounds like I have a bit of work ahead of me. Right now it’s over a Gig in size. I loathe the idea of reducing it to 15fps, though. It’s a very high quality image, shot with a 3CCD Panasonic Mini DV camera.
Will report back with a linky when I figure this out.
YouTube reduces it to 12fps, so don’t loathe the idea TOO much. Your video will never look great on YouTube, due to the compression, scaling, and fps… the best you can do is upload the highest quality you can and cross your fingers that it looks okay when YouTube is done with it.