Best practice for putting a longer movie together from existing parts?

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Best practice for putting a longer movie together from existing parts?

I have produced a number of music videos in FCP. These should now be put together as a longer 30-40 minute movie. What is the best practice for doing so?

Spontaneously, I would export all of these parts/projects as 4K movies and then import them into a new 4K project to make the longer movie, but I'm wondering if this would affect image or sound quality (perhaps applying compression to what has already been compressed), or if there's a better way of doing this.

iMac 24″, macOS 14.7

Posted on Feb 4, 2025 1:35 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 4, 2025 1:56 AM in response to TZW

Just do it the way you have detailed . . . any compression artefacts will be so minimal as to be undetectable.

If you are really paranoid you could in future export your new videos as ProRes so that when you later combine them there is less compression but I doubt if you would see or hear any difference.

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Answer 2

Feb 4, 2025 2:04 AM in response to TZW

That is exactly the way I do it.

Just as Ian said, any artifacts will probably be unnoticeable, but you can export the separate pieces in ProRes if that gives you greater peace of mind. Oh, and import using "leave in place" so you don't make copies of these large files.

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Answer 3

Feb 4, 2025 2:34 AM in response to TZW

For your own peace of mind just do it the way you originally detailed and see/hear for yourself whether there is any difference.

It will be lower quality but all that matters is does it appear to be lower.

If you can't detect it then it doesn't matter.

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Answer 4

Feb 4, 2025 2:34 AM in response to TZW

TZW wrote:

Thank you, and good tip to use "leave in place" – the FCP library is growing rapidly (must look into deleting unused source files).

It may not be for everyone, but I prefer to organize my media using Finder, in appropriate folder structures that reflect my mental organization of it, and always import using leave in place. A further benefit is that if you import media in folders, these can be set to automatically become keywords in FCP. Libraries are always small.

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