How do I do these really simple things?

I've been slowly making my way through the Apple Pro Training Series book for FCPX, but I need to interrupt my studies to do a project for a friend of mine. I totally know how to do this in iMovie HD 6, but I can't begin to imagine how it's done in FCPX.

Basically, my friend is a recording artist, and I need to take some of her songs and put them in videos that simply have a still image for the visual, and upload those to her YouTube channel.

So.

How do I import a still image into FCPX and turn it into a clip that's as long as the song is?

And how do I import the song? I know I've imported audio before, but I forget how it's done.

Last question: What's the best way to get FCPX to output a file that YouTube's software will be happy converting?

I don't want to input the YouTube login credentials into FCPX and use its seamless YouTube upload capability; I'd like to be able to generate the appropriate file type and manually upload it.



Thank you in advance for your guidance!

- You import it with Command-i, like you import everything. Drop it into the Timeline, select it, Control-D and type in the desired duration. Or just grab the tail and drag it out to the desired duration.

- You import everything via Command-i, the Import Window. One of the first things the book teaches you. Edit the song audio into the Timeline first, placing it into the Primary Storyline. Let all the photos be connected clips, or part of a Connected Storyline.

- I output a Master File, native frame rate/size, and let YouTube do the conversion from that ProRes for me. May take a tad longer to upload, but always gives me great results. The "Web Hosting" option has worked really well for me, also.

Thank you, BenB!

It's been my experience that YouTube can be awfully finicky in terms of which files can be uploaded successfully and which can't, so that's good to know about doing it via a Master File.


Many thanks!

PacificaBren wrote: … good to know about doing it via a Master File.

may I chime in to contradict Mr Balser? :ohmy:

For a project like yours (music+one still), proRes is just useless burning bandwidth; hey, what 'pcture quality' are we talking about anyhow?

Choose ApplelDevice720, gives a nice, tiny file, about the 1/20th of the size of a Master.... and therefor decreases the upload times daramatically …

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, try it and see, there are no universals when it comes to YT. I've uploaded tons of files to YT for clients (against my advice to use Vimeo). Most of the time, a highly compressed video being uploaded, getting recompressed to an even more highly compressed video, shows very glaring image quality degradation. We resorted to using ProRes files, so that we start with the best, and have never had issues. Burning needless bandwidth? Not when quality matters, in our years of experience. I just don't waste time experimenting any longer. Spend the time for the larger file upload, save time re-uploading if it doesn't give good results. Garbage in, garbage out, roll the dice and take your chances. But starting with your best quality file is not a waste of anything, nor useless, in my company's years of experience.

All that said, yes, you can export a highly compressed H.264, then upload it, and sometimes get good results. Try it and see.

In the end, I'd say tell your friend to get a Vimeo account and not waste bandwidth on YT's crap re-encoding.

My standard practice over the last few years has been to use a no-longer-supported program called Visual Hub to convert my videos to raw .flv format before uploading to YouTube. My experience has been that whenever YouTube just absolutely refuses to play nicely with a file type, converting it to raw .flv solves the problem.


But in this case, Apple Devices 720p worked just fine.


Thanks again!

PacificaBren wrote: … to convert my videos to raw .flv format before uploading to YouTube.…

flv/Flash Video was nothing else than h.264 inside a Flash-media-container..... Lucky us, YoutTube stopped using that pest…
Meanwhile, YT has changed its internal system, any upload (of any format) gets converted into at last 16 diff. files; YT detects the watchers device, from prehistoric 3gp with 170pix up to 'smartTV' with UHD, checks your connection speed, and then choose which format, which resolution, which bitrate gives the watcher the best user experience.

So, Ben's advice to upload the best, least less compressed file = proRes is fully correct - re-compressing compressed material doesn't look good; but in your case, a plan 'music file', showing minutes just a signle still, upload quality is of no relevance.... proRes doesn't add any value.