So sorry to bother the pros with this but...

emis100 wrote:

1. Why do I or don't I need Compressor to achieve the goals above?

You don't. FCP can handle this just fine.

2. How much space will an HD one-hour video take up on my hard drive?

For Apple TV and Video Sharing, you'll be encoding to h.264. The ATV setting would make a file of about 5 GB, The Video Share file would be about twice as large.

3. If FCPX exports in HD quality, why would I need Compressor? Won't Compressor degrade the quality if it compresses the file?

Again, FCP will export a wide variety of HD formats very well. Yes, encoding projects done in Compressor will slightly degrade the quality, but so they will in FCP as well. However, either app should do a very good job of minimizing that quality hit. Your movies should look great.

Good luck.

Russ

I don't know what the YT limit is if your account allows for videos above 15minutes. If you export at 720 resolution, it will be quite a bit smaller and still look good. If you need to reduce it further to meet any upload limits you could lower the bit rates even further in either MPEG Streamclip or Compressor to fit. FWIW I have found bit rates of 7 to 8 Mbps to be quite adequate for 1080 Web video and about 5 Mbps for 720. Those are much lower than the FCP settings and hence the files are much smaller.

Good luck.

Russ

I'm not that You Tube-savvy, butthis seems to indicate you can arrange to have files larger than 2 GB…also, I'm fairly sure that I've gone above 2 GB. (I typically use Vimeo and I'm more familiar with their rules.)

Roughly speaking, bit rate is a measure of the digital information that is being transmitted as the video file streams. Al things equal, higher rates generally result higher quality, but with tradeoffs in size, upload time, and possible playback issues.

emis100 wrote:

I still don't know what the purpose of Compressor is if FCPX does the same thing.... 😟

FCP does some of what Compressor does, but with less capability to make adjustments to meet special special requirements. For example, the FCP DVD share preset encodes a 1080 HD video to a DVD-compliant MPEG-2 , at a bit rate of 7.7 Megabits per second. That rate will allow about 67 minutes to be fit on to a single layer DVD. But suppose your video were 77 minutes. Rather than chopping it into two parts, in Compressor you could lower the bit rate by about 10% to make it fit on one disk. Compressor has many more capabilities, but the preceding example is one of the most common uses for the typical home video user.

Hope that helps.

Russ

You're right about Vimeo. Free accounts are limited to 500 MBs and Plus accounts are limited to 5 GB.

My Vimeo uploads are typically 30 minute pieces. I encode them to 720P @ around 8 Megabits per second and the files are about a Gigabyte and a half. It's never been necessary for me to upload pieces that were more than one hour. If it were, I guess I would check with Dropbox to see what their upload limits were – if any.

So, back to You Tube…did you find that they actualy do impose a size limit if you established a >15 minute account? It didn't see from what I read that they had any limit. And I seem to recall others who've indicated they had long movies on that site. Perhaps you could some more definitive answers in the YT forums over at Google?

Good luck.

Russ

Why not try the TY uploader and see if it accepts it? Although I've never tried a 90 minute Vimeo upload, I have inadvertantly selected a 30 GB master file, and when I did, Vimeo's immediatetly rejected it with a reminder of their size limits. I would imagine YT uploader behavior would be similar.

emis100 wrote:

As you are working in FCPX, can you check the file size of the file along the way as you create the video?

Yes. Click on the Share arrow; choose your export preset (say, You Tube 720P), and the dialogue box that appears will give you an estimated size at the bottom.

Russ