Sharing Footage For Dummies help needed

Ok, so shortly I will begin my Apple Final Cut Pro training at the Apple Store for exrtemely high price of $99 for 1 hour of training per week for 1 year. What is that, less than 50 cents an hour?

I will probably buy 2 Apple Pro Care packages so I can up that to 2 hours a week.

Having said that, I will end up with probably 90 minutes of edited footage wioth narration all done expedition/underwater critter explorer format type. Next trip it will be more of a combination of dive travel and critters in either Anilao, Cebu or Sulawesi.

I am interested in editing a particular clip for sharing here. Now I no that if I ever become a rocket scientist on this editing stuff I will regret the following lame question, but what the hell....Can some merciful soul brimming with patience for dummys post a brief on how to take some clip footage and massage it so it is suitable for downloading here first then elsewhere? Obviously Quicktime 1st but then WMV or whatever files people need to see it all.....

Sundry questions like what file size should it be limited to, etc will do.

Thanks for anyone who dares.....lol

Dave

There is the pinned thread on this very subject in the sub forum:

How to embed...

Aren't those classes suppose to be free? I mean I was paid pretty dismal amounts to do a few last year.

Dave

There is the pinned thread on this very subject in the sub forum:

 

How to embed...

 

Aren't those classes suppose to be free? I mean I was paid pretty dismal amounts to do a few last year.

Sure, they have into classes, but nothing extensive.....

Oh you're talking about the pro care personal training thing. Yeah Pro care is a bit of mixed bag if you don't use the personaly training thing. Problem with Genius Bar technical support is they can't recommend 3rd party software to solve problems, which really sucks!

Hey Dave..yeh we want to see some of ya stuff.

You can use the templates found in any encoder but for small clips try this for 16.9 material.

Use wmv9 and QT H.264

320 x 180 set pixel aspect ratio to 1 and CBR to 500kbps single pass

Set it a 25 or 29 fps

This will give you small files.

640 x 360 same as above but encode out @ CBR of 1500-2000 kbps, single pass.

Then you can go bigger again if you like say 1280/720.

Have fun

Opps I didn't fully read your request. I assumed you knew how to compress files.

Since you're using a mac, things are a bit easier. Just export your sequence to a QT.mov file and use Compressor to downconvert. I suggest using the Apple preset for QT 7(H264), 300kbps. That should be fine. The 800kbps is for serious connections. Some areas have crappy ADSL so 300kbps is a good compromise.

Hi Dave! I agree with scubadru that Compressor is your easiest bet on a Mac. If you're working with Studio 5.1, Compressor seems to be even better than its previous incarnation (or is it just my wishful imagination?) I've made a screen grab of the setting dropdowns for you at:

http://divefilmarchive.com/images/CompressorSetting.jpg

One thing I've noticed about Compressor, though, is that you're best off exporting as a self-contained QT movie (use Current Settings) from the FCP timeline, then dropping that self-contained QT movie into the Compressor interface. Otherwise if you try to use a "reference movie" or export to Compressor directly out of the FCP timeline the encoding process will take much longer. Also, if you do it this way, your FCP won't be "locked up" during the encoding process and you can keep right on editing in FCP while Compressor is doing its thing.

I've heard good things about those Apple Pro classes and think you'll be glad you did that. I'm self-taught in FCP (since version 1.x)--well, Steve Douglas and I struggled through the early learning curve together and still share editing tips and ideas with eachother--but wish I'd had a quicker introduction to some of the basics back when. Would have made the process that much easier!

Congratulations on entering the wild world of video editing, and I can't wait to see your work on the video forum here!

Mary Lynn

http://DiveFilm.com

Mary Lynn is so correct; there was absolutely nothing out there, no books, no tutorials discs or forums when she and I first started in FCP 1.0. Now there is a plethoria of extremely useful materials to suppliment learning almost any software. Of course, Mary Lynn has far surpassed me in such applications as Compressor and DVD Studio Pro but I'd bet either she or I could teach in a couple of hours what it took her and I a year to learn when FCP first came out.

This is a wonderful endeavor we are all in and I am often amazed to see how the quality of many of the clips that are posted has risen since many of us started using 8mm Minoltas and whatever housing was out there.

As far as Compressor goes, Ripple Training has an excellent DVD tutorial disc entitled "The Art of Encoding using Compressor" and I highly recommend it. In addition, Total Training, recently came out with a 2 disc tutorial DVD entitled "Final Cut Studio, A Post Production Workflow" that is about as comprehensive a tutorial as you can expect covering not only Final Cut Pro but Compressor, DVD Studio Pro, Motion and Soundtrack Pro. This tutorial really can help you get a better handle on roundtripping between these applications creating a smoother workflow for any editing project.

Steve B)

Thanks for all the tips everyone......I am running FCP 5.0, so no Studio compressor thing.....

I got an exernal FireWire 800 Hard drive from OWC, looks identical to the Mac Tower.....I use this as the scratch disk for FCP so I can take my project for the one on one Apple Pro care training.....that way it is my project that gets worked on.....

The Other Word Computing firewire external is a 500 G I got for $299, and I just got a Maxtor 500G SATA II 1kk buffer 7200rpm for my main internal hard drive to replace the facotry 120 g. So this Sunday I will have a 500G new Maxtor SATA II as the main hard drive, the same drive for the 2nd internal, and the 500G external....

I think that ought to cover it! I got the new internal hard drives for $175 off E-bay.