How do I get the quality of my movie to match the quality of the export?

Export your Timeline as Quicktime Movie not one of the Compression options.

Al

This is me, the questioner, on a different account. It's with that option that I have the problem. It's a better quality than the compression but still washed out. On a side note, wherever I export to Quicktime the file needs time to convert before I can view it. Maybe its that process that degrades the quality?

I've attached an image to compare the quality:

The image doesn't work, but anyway it's not drastically worse but after so much time color correcting and doing such things the difference to me is huge.

Are you viewing in QuickTime 7? Open the preferences and make sure Use high-quality video setting when available is checked.

MtD

It says it's Quicktime 10.3? I couldn't find where that setting is, the one in the picture.

I actually solved the problem by exporting a short sample of the movie with an additional color-corrector filter to counter the washed-out look that exported Quicktime movie was giving me until I got the image to be just right, then I applied it to every frame and each looks very close to its source in the editor. It worked really well.

Thank you all for the suggestions. This works for me, but as my method seems to be the "hard" way, if anyone knows of a more practical solution, answers would still be useful.

To verify, this is with Final Cut Express, not FCP-X, correct?

You should have a copy of QuickTime Player 7 on your system if you have installed Final Cut Express.

It is sometime located in the Utilities folder on your computer:

QuickTime X is not suitable for this kind of work. It is a general purpose player. I (IMHO) would not steer my color correction by what QuickTime X is showing me.

MtD

What type of files are you using?

Find out by right clicking a clip in the Browser and select Item Properties.

Al