I have a specific workflow about getting my videos ready especially getting ready for YouTube HD.
A lot of people ask me, You have Final Cut Pro, why do you even involve iMovie in the process. And well since it’s just a 10 minute limit I’m not going to be able to take you to step by step like a whole project. But I’m going to run you through one that I’ve put together to show the steps that I take to get my movies ready using our movie final cut, sound track, compressor and the like.
So the first thing I did was I filmed me a desktop screen record. I screen recorded myself multi-tasking here. Here is the movie. You can see it just me multi-tasking okay, and this is the final product as you can see if I say get info it’s a 103.3 MIGS total Bits right about 321280X 720. Bits right to a little high I don’t need to be that high for YouTube, but that gives YouTube a lot to work with, and it’s a five minute video in 200 MIG okay. So this is what we’re going to end up with our 1280X720 ready for YouTube.
So the first thing I did I have to record my movie. It will bring it straight to iMOviee okay. When I hid and laid down some rough edits. Edited my movie roughly okay I didn’t any titles no transitions. I just roughly inserted some edits, and remove some video and parts of the video that I know for sure I wasn’t going to use and stuff like that very rough edit. And after I laid down my rough edit. I went to share, export, final cut.xml okay, and when I did this I got this little xml file here on my desk top okay. So then what I did was of course I opened that Final Cut Pro here laid down my audio of course this audio is from soundtrack, so what I’ve done was I opened that soundtrack or you can just send your project to soundtrack. I located the music that I want like this. You can locate in your finder by right clicking and revealing finder. You can drag it straight in the Final Cut, or you can make it into a project and import the project either way you go don’t matter. I found the music I wanted. I bring it back into final cut pro, and as you can see I lay down my music here. Here’s the video okay everything is good. I polished up my edits from the rough cut that I sent for iMovie. I went ahead and trimmed it up and finalize it. And you know tighten up the edits. Then what I did was I went to file export QuickTime movie, and I uncheck mixed up contain movie. I don’t want that check because I’m using compressor. And I just said save. It didn’t take but a minute saved it out, and I’ve got this little QuickTime movie here. As you can see I can get info if I named it on my movie sequence SCP, and it’s 48 megs and there it is okay.
So now after I export edited rough edited in iMovie, save it as xml sent it to final cut pro we just open it in final cut pro however you want. Tightened up my edit and finalize my edits. Open up sound track found the music I wanted bring my music in then I exported it as a QuickTime movie not self contained. And this bring us to this step right here. Here’s a movie you just exported. Then I opened up compressor, bring in it that movie in that non-self contained movie that I exported. Give it my YouTubeHD preset I’ve already got preset if you watch my other video as you learned all about that. And as you can see one note I missed here I recorded my desktop using Screen Flow which is this movie right here. And when I export it from Screen Flow, I exported using Apple ProRes 422 okay. So the direct file from Screen Flow which is right here before I even sent it to iMovie as you can see is 10 gigs because this ProRes 422. Its got almost a 150,000 total bit rate. So the information inside this movie is huge okay. It’s a 10 gig file, but it’s ProRes 422. So I exported from Screen Flow using ProRes 422. Sent up my ProRes 422 to iMovie give my rough cut exported my 422 movie as an xml, ended up with my xml. Open Final Cut Pro imported my xml file to final cut pro. Open sound track, laid down my music, finalize my edits, exported as a QuickTime movie non self-contained. We ended with our little save file that I just showed you. I didn’t open that compressor laid my YouTube HD preset down exported it and from a 10 gig 422 ProRes file I ended with a 100 MIG file 1280 by 720, and here it is. As you can see the quality is wonderful it’s 1280X720. I also used the color correction inside of iMovie because I love the color corrections for iMovie for screen capture. It just blocken up the darkness and the text it block it and boldens the text to whole lot. So if you do a lot of screen captures, do the auto adjust inside iMovie. I really like the audio adjust setting for un movie screen captures, and that was it.
So I went from a 10 gig 422 ProRes file from Screen Flow into iMovie save it as an xml, went to Final Cut Pro, laid down my music, exported it, went into compressor, laid down my YouTube preset and in the end it comes out as a 100 meg file from a 10 gig file, and it’s pretty down impressive in my movie as ready for upload to YouTube. Sounds like a lot guys, but it’s not. Take a couple walk-thrus of this video and watch I do things, and you’ll see my workflow, and you’ll notice that I’ve done several workflows, and this one seems to be the best so far.
So thanks for watching guys.
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