Final Cut Pro Web Compression Settings
By: NateKapitanski1. Edit your clip with Final Cut Pro. When your ready to export your clip go to File > Export > Using QuickTime Conversion |
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| 2. Once there, this save window will come up. Now click the Options box. |  |
| 3. Now to Movie Settings window appears. This window shows the summary of the current settings that will be used when exporting. These default settings are not the ones we want to use. To start off we will click the Settings option under Video. |  |
| 4. Now the Compression Settings
window appears. Now what we want to do is change the settings to the ones
pictured here. We will use the MPEG-4 video compression codec, at the best
quality, with a 29.97 frame rate, keying every 24 frames and limiting the
data rate to 100 Kilobytes a second. Once you have these settings, click
OK. Note: You do not have to use these exact settings but these are what I have found to be the best. You can lower the data rate to as low as 91 Kilobytes a second if you want, but I've found 97-100 to be good at keeping the motion sharp and smooth. You can even up if to 120 if you like but it will increase the file size about 20%. |
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| 5. Now you will be back at the movie settings window. Now click the Size button under Video. |  |
| 6. Now the Export Size Settings
Window will appear. Click the Use custom size box and enter in 320 for the
width and 240 for the height. This reduces standard DV footage to 50% the
original size. Click OK once you have these settings.
Note: You can enter something like 420 x 340 if you want the video size to be bigger. With the bigger video size you would want to increase the data rate, from step 5, to around 140 Kilobytes a second to make sure the video still looks good. This would increase the files size by a lot though! |
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| 7. Now we will be back at the Movie Settings window again and this is what it should look like so far. Now that we have the video settings done we can move onto the sound settings. Click the Settings box under Sound. |  |
| 8. Now we are at the sound settings window. I found MPEG-4 Audio to be a good audio compressor so that what we're going to stick with. So change the Compressor to MPEG-4 Audio, set the Rate to 32.000 kHz and keep the 16 bit and Stereo options checked. Don't click OK just yet though. Click the Options button |  |
| 9. Advanced audio settings will be displayed now. You can leave the settings as they are or you can change the Bit Rate a little if you want higher or lower quality audio, which would result in slightly larger or small file sizes. Now Click OK here and click OK as well back in the sound settings window. |  |
| 10. Now we are back at the Movie Settings window for the last time. The window should now look like this one pictured. Now click OK and move on to the final step. |  |
| 11. Now its time to save the file for compression. Notice how the “Use” setting reads “Most Recent Settings” as opposed to “Default Settings” which it read at the start. Figure out where you want to save the clip to, click Save, and wait for the video to render! Now you should have a nice video file compressed for the web! |  |