I made a 5-second video of my brother running around the yard and teleporting him everywhere in FCE 4.0.1. I exported it using AIC defaults. The 5 seconds of video is 87mb! I can't even think about how big it would be if I decide to make a short film... How can I reduce this file size and keep the HD quality of the video?
Thanks in advance,
Adam
MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
HD video is large, usually expect about 40-60 gig per hour.
Yes you require lots of storage space for video work in High Def.
You are best to get yourself a dedicated drive for storing your media and exports as this relieves your system drive of much of the "heavy lifting."
Firewire 800 formatted to Mac OS Extended as big as you can afford is a good place to start for your MacBook.
Al
HD video is large, usually expect about 40-60 gig per hour.
Yes you require lots of storage space for video work in High Def.
You are best to get yourself a dedicated drive for storing your media and exports as this relieves your system drive of much of the "heavy lifting."
Firewire 800 formatted to Mac OS Extended as big as you can afford is a good place to start for your MacBook.
Al
Thanks! But why are some of the HD 1.5 hour movies on my iPad only about 2 gigs?
Understanding what a codec (COmpessionDECompression) is will help.
It's because the footage on the camera is COmpressed, when ingested to FCE, FCE transcodes to AIC (Apple Intermediate Codec, DECompressing) to allow for frame by frame editing. The CO & DEC are short for CODEC.
Think about your camera footage as a vacuum clothing bag with all the air taken out to save space. When the seal is broken it returns to the original size.
When FCE ingests the footage to edit it, it has to open the seal to get at each frame.
Search for GOP and CODEC and you will get the idea.
Al
Thanks for all that info! So what codec do I need to use when exporting to maintain HD quality and keep the size down?
What you want is the elusive Holy Grail that many say is a Black art.
You need knowledge and know how that requires a learning curve.
Here's somewhere to start:
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/qt_h-264_movies_fcp.html
Al
Final Cut Exported File is HUGE!
