hi, does anyone know how to export your project to mpeg 2 (or any mpeg format that renders good quality) using FCP4? do i need any plugins to do this? it takes so much time to convert mov files to mpeg using cleaner thats why i'm looking for alternatives... thanks...
Cleaner sucks! ;-) Well, not really. But it's too expensive and is a bit on the slow side. ffmpegX works better and faster and it's free. There are two ways to export your FCP projects/sequences to MPEG-2 without using any third-party apps: 1.) Use Quicktime Conversion (File -> Export -> Using Quicktime Conversion). When the Save window appears, select "MPEG-2" as the format. Click on "Options" to finetune the settings (One Pass or Two Pass, bitrate, etc.). Standard bitrate for MPEG-2 is around 4Mb/s (you can go higher if you want, not too high though. Anything between 4Mb/s and 7Mb/s will be great). Update: if you're going for SVCD, max should be 2.5Mb/s. Anything more than that will just add to the file sizes without any noticeable increase in quality. 2.) Use Compressor (File -> Export -> Using Compressor). There's a number of presets available in Compressor, including those for MPEG-2. Haven't tried any though. I usually use ffmpegX for my encoding needs (options galore!). Good luck! ~Henjie [Edited on 4-21-2004 by Henjie]