Exporting for the web

- [Voiceover] All right, now we're ready to export the project as a QuickTime movie which will let us deliver it to our client or send it to another program for encoding or DVD authoring, or upload it to the Web. Now for our purposes we're going to do a Web export. So let's take a look here. Now, again, if you're following along with the exercise files and you're just jumping in now you can join me in the Hot Glass Chapter 2 project but you'll just need to perform the AMA relink step that I show you at the beginning of the fourth movie in this chapter, Basic Editing. All right, so just so you know, this sequence is pretty much where we left it off in the last movie.

All it needed was some additional chroma key work, and a couple of transitions here and there, and I've actually done that for us already. I won't have the opportunity to cover these concepts in this fast-track chapter, but I will go over both of these in detail later in the course in the Effects chapter. So please watch the movies on transitions and chroma keys in chapter nine. So let's export this. I can right-click on my sequence in my bin and choose Export, or I can choose Export from the File menu, and when I do that I get this Export window, and I can come up here and rename it if I'd like to.

I'll just leave that alone though. And then down here I get the option to choose my export settings. Now, as you can see, there are many different kinds. Video files, audio files, image files, and files that are for specific programs. We just want a QuickTime movie, so we want to make sure to choose Send To QT Movie. Then, it's important that you click the Options button so that you can customize this. All right, so this is the Export Settings window for a QuickTime movie, and there's a lot of choices that you can make in here. We won't go over all of them, but I do want to cover some basics of exporting a video for the Web.

Now, way up at the top here you can select exactly the type of file that you want to output. For us, we want to make sure that QuickTime Movie is selected. Over here, we have Use Marks and Use Enabled Tracks. Marks are just my in and out points, and enabled tracks mean the tracks that I have selected in my timeline. So if you just want to export a portion of the sequence, you can set an in and an out, or if you want to export a version without titles, for example, you can enable all tracks except V3. In our case, though, we want to export the whole thing so I'll just leave these boxes unchecked.

Right under that, you have your encoding options. You can either choose Same as Source or Custom. Choosing Same as Source means that the export settings will match your sequence. Now notice when I do that that a lot of the options here just disappear. I'll show you again. Here's Custom. Here's Same as Source, all right? So when you're not customizing it kind of bakes in those choices for you. Also, the file that results from selecting this will likely be quite large, probably several hundred megabytes since it's not going through any compression. So, all in all, not the best option for a Web video.

But it can be a great option to preserve the full quality of the project if you're later going to bring it into an encoding program, for example, like Compressor or Sorenson Squeeze. But, if you select this option, Custom, you can choose to encode it to your liking within Media Composer. So, because we're exporting for the Web, I'm just going to select that, and then I'm going to climb into Format Options, and here I can set the video and audio settings and customize it to my liking. So I'm first going to go into Video Settings, and there is a big long list here that I can choose from.

So if you have a specific deliverable you can usually try to find something to match it. But I'm going to come here to H.264 'cause it's a really good codec for the Web. It's something that looks very good but also results in a nice small file. So I'm going to choose that. I'll set this to Automatic. I'll leave this at High, Encoding at Best quality, and Data Rate at Automatic. We won't talk about all of these options right now but you can see that there are a lot of choices that allow you to really dig in and get very specific. So I'll say OK here, and now I'm going to just check Sound and Settings.

So here I can, likewise, choose very specific options. I'm just going to change this from 44.1 to 48 kilohertz. I like to have my audio at 48 kilohertz and 16 bit, which we're already set at so I'll say OK. Again, there are no wrong options when you're encoding your video but these are some specific settings that I like when I'm exporting for the Web. So I'll say OK, and next I'll come down here. I'm going to choose Video and Audio. Video Only is selected by default and I'm not quite sure why, but always make sure that you've selected your video and audio.

You want to make sure to export both, and then come down to Video Format. Here, under Width and Height, also a strange default option, it defaults to a very small resolution. Again, I'm honestly not sure why because nearly all Web videos now are in HD because compression has gotten so good. So just make sure to switch this to an HD resolution, and my project is at 1280 by 720 so I want to match that. Under Color Levels, I'm going to choose RGB. And under Display Aspect Ratio, again we want to make sure that 1280 by 720 is selected, and I should be in good shape now.

Now if this is a group of settings that I want to use again and again I can come down here and choose Save As, and I can call this Web QuickTime H.264 1280 by 720. OK? And I'll say OK, and Save. Now, you can see that that is saved as an export setting within this list and I can automatically go to it without having to climb into my Options. So let's go ahead and just save it to my Desktop, and Save.

All right, so it's done. I'll hide Media Composer, command h. And here it is, I'll go ahead and double-click and just scrub through, make sure everything's looking good. OK, and just play a little bit of it so we can see it in action. - [Voiceover] To our will, with our bare hands, wet newspaper on the 2,000 degree surface. - [Voiceover] All right, looks really beautiful and if I right-click and choose Get Info we can see that it's only 70 megabytes. So, again, a really great solution for the Web.