When you’re finished with your edit, how should you export?

Well, it depends.

METHOD #1. Reference movie

If you want to export a temporary file as quickly as possible, export a reference movie.

File > Export > Quicktime Movie

UNcheck “Make Self-Contained”

Pros:

• If you’ve rendered your sequence, this is the fastest way to export
• The file size is very small – it only contains audio and pointers to the video files, no actual video

Cons:

• The exported file is fragile and not portable. If any of the referenced video files (including render files) are moved, renamed or deleted, or if the ref movie is moved to a different computer, the reference movie will not open. This means you should use the ref movie right away, for example, to import into DV Kitchen to publish on the web. It is definitely useless as an archival movie to save for future use.
• If your sequence is in DV format, the quality of text, graphics and animations will be very poor.
• If your sequence is in HDV format, the quality of text, graphics and animations will not be as good as it could be, especially fast moving or intricate CG.

If you are converned about quality, try a short test export of a section containing titles, graphics or an animation and view it in Quicktime Player.

METHOD #2. Native format movie

If you want to export quickly, but want an exported movie that is permanent and self-contained, export a native format movie.

File > Export > Quicktime Movie

Make sure “Make Self-Contained” is checked

Pros:

• If you’ve rendered your sequence, this is faster than the 3rd option below

Cons:

• If your sequence is in DV format, the quality of text, graphics and animations will be very poor.
• If your sequence is in HDV format, the quality of text, graphics and animations will not be as good as it could be, especially fast moving or intricate CG.

METHOD #3. lossless PNG movie

If you have completed an important project, and want a perfect quality export, and don’t mind if it takes a while, this method quickly, but want an exported movie that is permanent and self-contained, export a PNG codec movie.

This way, now or anytime in the future, you can:

• encode this movie to x264, H264, FLV or WMV (or any other format) with DV Kitchen
• drag it into DVD Studio Pro or iDVD to author an SD DVD
• import it into Encore or Toast to author a Blu-Ray DVD
• take it on a Firewire drive to a dub house to transfer to a broadcast format for cable/satellite, or for a film festival
• or any other conceivable use.

You can copy the exported movie to a cheap terabyte Firewire or even USB drive to archive it and save room on your main drives.

I recommend the PNG codec, because it is lossless, and it is compatible with almost any software that accepts Quicktime files.

If you are concerned with how long it will take, try a test export (with a 5 second sample) and time it, then try one of the methods above and time that. This way, you can easily calculate how long the entire export will take. If the 5 seconds took 10 seconds to export, this is a 2-1 ratio- so a 2 hour timeline will take 4 hours.

Here are the steps:

That’s it!

Now your exported movie is safe and ready to delivery in any format – regardless of what happens to your source footage or files.

For more info, check out:

Final Cut Pro Foundations

Final Cut Express Foundations

We’ve always had good luck with Apple brand blanks. The charts below, from http://www.digitalfaq.com/media/dvdmedia.htm, rate blank DVDs:

1ST CLASS MEDIA – EXCELLENT DISCS:
Almost flawless burns with 95-100% reliable results. These discs are suited for pretty much anything. They will usually serve as excellent archival quality media, as well as video masters. These discs are often the most expensive DVD media, so be sure to take advantage of sales, when available. (Trivia: The 5 best discs ever created are probably PVC001001, PVC001002, MXLRG02, MCC00RG20 and YUDEN000T02, with exceptional quality burns.)

2ND CLASS MEDIA – OKAY DISCS: 
Mixed quality media, average 75-90% of discs tend to be good. These discs are not suggested for archival data or video masters. These are best suited for data that can be replaced easily, such as secondary backups or data/video distribution. In bulk, these tend to be less expensive than 1ST CLASS media.

There have been a lot of questions from people who are unhappy with how their DVD video discs are working when played on computers and/or DVD players.

Here is a short list of differences:

• Buttons rollovers do not work the same depending on what WinXP DVD player application is being used, or in Apple DVD Player
• TVs show cropped action safe area, computers show the whole picture
• MPEG2 encoding that looks fine on a TV often looks bad on a computer… or vice versa sometimes!
• DVD players play at way lower rez than a computer display (720 X 480 vs. 2560 X 1600 or whatever)
• On a computer, users expect to be able to click and access web pages, or additional content on the DVD

The DVD is a format that is designed to play from DVD players on TVs. The fact that computers have DVD compatible drives was originally a side-effect of saving on manufacturing costs, no one thought many people would be playing DVDs on a computer.

But, you essentially have two choices:

1. If you want a lot of control over how your DVDs play on a computer, you will probably be unhappy with the standard DVD disc format (with VIDEO_TS folder, MPEG2 encoding, etc.). So you will have to author your discs, just like in the multimedia CD era, with an authoring software program.

   You can present your program in a browser, (the advantage of which is that it’s easy once you’ve created the menus, etc., to deply your project on the web), or you can use Acrobat, Director, LiveStage Pro, iShell, Keynote, PowerPoint, Flash, Movieworks or many others. (Even Word and Excel will play movies.) (If you’re not sure which to choose, click here and tell me about your project.)

   In this way, you have total control over the experience of your viewers watching on a computer. You can use FLV or H.264 encoding, crop the picture correctly, and have your buttons pull up web pages, computer content, whatever. Your movies will be small compared to the overall size of today’s monitors. But they’ll look good! The downside of option #1 is that you have to author your project twice, once in a DVD authoring app and once in a multimedia app.

2. The other option is just to make a regular DVD video disc and live with it. Most recent computers will be able to play it, even though the experience will not be like a DVD player, but option #2 is a lot easier!

A detailed answer can be found here.