Exporting footage for Youtube, Vimeo...getting stuttering

How subtle is this stuttering? Is it the difference between seeing your video interlaced and deinterlaced?

What are the exact properties of the file you are sending to YouTube or Vimeo? (to find out, import that file into FCP, click on the file in the FCP Browser to select it and once selected type Command + 9 to see the properties for the clip. Either report those properties here or take a screen shot and post that screen shot of the item properties here).

MtD

While I don't suspect MPEG Streamclip as being the problem, you might want to try this workflow:

From FCP-7, export your sequence from the timeline as a QuickTime movie, self contained and without conversion -

File > Export > QuickTime Movie . . .

Make sure "Make Movie Self Contained" is checked -

Once you have that exported file, take that file into Compressor and use the pre-set for YouTube to convert the file for YouTube or Vimeo.

Upload that - do you see any improvement?

MtD

Wait....is that the format of the clip you are EDITING with? Are you editing a clip that is H.264? That's a no-no. FCP doesn't work with H.264 well...not well at all. Especially if you edit with it, and then export...the export will either lose sync, or be choppy.

FCP only works with clips in FCP editing codecs...such as ProRes. All video must be converted to an editing codec like ProRes first, THEN edited. Then when you export things will be better.

Yes, Shane is absolutely right - I thought the screen shot you were showing was the requested re-ingestion of your exported file.

Thanks, Mr. Ross.

MtD

Ah...

Yes, use Compressor, as it has YOUTUBE presets. And then play that file afterwards to see how it looks. But know that even with the YouTube preset, YouTube will STILL compress the footage again.

OK, I do this all the time - make TV spots etc. in 1080 60i in ProRes and put them on Vimeo for client review and approval at 720P h.264 and it works fine, so would expect it to work for you.

Remember - compression is based on the complexity of the scene, so a fast panning shot of a basketball game with all the players running down the court is much harder to compress than a locked off shot of a person giving a lecture. You may need to crank up the file target data rate to support the fast action.

What also makes this a hard problem to isolate is you also have all the variables involved with playing back the spots from Vimeo on your particular computer/network/internet connection involved.

If you are happy with the file you have created to upload playing locally on your computer, and then have problems when playing it on Vimeo, you might need to look in some other areas - like switching browers, etc.

MtD

Is your media on an external drive? Best practice is to keep the media on an external drive -

from the FCP manual:

You should make a back up clones of both your media storage disk(s) and your mac system disk. Good quality, high capacity external drives are cheap. Finding and re-ingesting all your source footage is time consuming and frustrating.

There are several ways to do this, I like Carbon Copy Cloner to do it.

This will make a clone of your drive - an identical, bit for bit copy - so that if your working drive fails (which it will) you can either switch to your cloned copy and keep going, or use the cloned copy as a source and make a new system or media drive.

Cloning via Carbon Copy Cloner is fast, once you do it the first time. In subsequent cloning, the software is smart enough to know only the changes you have made and will make those same changes on the back up disk, leaving unchanged files alone.

Because I make a living off editing, I make two clones of each disk. That gives me greater security that I'll have a working back up should something happen.

In addition to the end of workday clone, I also run a clone if I am stopped for a meeting, telephone call, or lunch if time allows.

This may seem a little over the top, but if you've ever had a drive fail mid-session, you'll understand the reasoning

If you are working with mission critical, non-replaceable footage, or are on extremely tight deadlines, you should also keep a cloned drive set off property in a secure location in case of catastrophe.

Another great tool which I also use is Digital Rebellion's Pro Versioner:

http://www.digitalrebellion.com/proversioner/

which will back up my project file (not the media) and store that backup at locations, including cloud locations such as dropbox, automatically. This is great not only for backing up but it also lets me keep multiple versions - so if I mistakenly delete a sequence, for example, I can go retrieve an earlier version of the project that still has the sequence in it.

MtD