Exporting Gopro 4K 100Mbps footage - Help

Hi,
Iam editing the 4K 100Mbps GoPro footage and the footage looks good in the edit but when export the master 4k file or the 1080p file the footage looks no so good. If I upload the same to youtube then the footage looks terrible. I use FCP 10.4.8 and the compressor installed.
Please need help in the export settings to use the footage for the youtube. I Need to upload most of the videos to youtube.

Need your help and suggessions.

Thanks in advance.

Yeswanth Kumar

For the absolute best quality, export ProRes 422 and upload that. I always use H.264 and have great results.

yeswanthkumarnagala wrote: ...Iam editing the 4K 100Mbps GoPro footage and the footage looks good in the edit but when export the master 4k file or the 1080p file the footage looks no so good. If I upload the same to youtube then the footage looks terrible. I use FCP 10.4.8 and the compressor installed...

It should generally look OK after export. We need to see a screen capture of the original shot and how it looks during local playback in Quicktime after export.

We also need the codec specifics of the GoPro camera clip. You can play that in Quicktime Player and do CMD+I, then post that info.

The default FCPX H264 Master File export uses a fairly high bit rate - significantly higher than what Youtube recommends. It normally looks very good after upload.

There is one exception -- if the source material is 10-bit, the scene contains gradients and H264 is 8-bit. This cause cause banding. As FCPX.guru said, exporting in ProRes avoids this but the file size and upload time might not be practical for your case.

Try this export in FCPX (not Compressor): File>Share>Master File>Settings, Format: Computer, Video Codec: H.264 Faster Encode, Resolution: 1920x1080 (or 3840 x 2160). Play back that local file in Quicktime and inspect it. If it looks OK then upload to Youtube, wait for it to encode to 1080, then play it back via streaming.

You can try using the "Better Quality" H264 export but this takes longer and usually does not make a visible difference.

If the GoPro material is 10-bit HEVC (aka H.265), then that could be an issue since H.264 is generally 8-bit. FCPX currently does not have hardware accelerated HEVC 10-bit encoding so it's too slow to be practical. In that case your only option would be export as ProRes then transcode to 10-bit HEVC via Handbrake. That would retain the 10-bit-per-channel info, avoid banding, and produce a small file easier to upload. The downside is it takes two separate steps and produce large intermediate ProRes files (which you need not keep).

HI.
Thanks for your input.

Please find the attachehemsnts for your reference.

Kindly suggest for good 4k and 1080 export settings in fcp and handbrake if i need to get good results.

Thanks in advance

Thanks for taking time to upload those screen caps. In general the 4k exports to your local drive look good. I see some slight blurring and compression but to some degree that is expected. You have a highly compressed 4k camera file and are re-compressing it with 4k export.

If by any chance you used a 1080p timeline then somehow upscaled it, that will hurt resolution a little. Make sure you use a 4k timeline within FCPX.

You can also try exporting it as 4k ProRes 422 and compare the quality. That avoids re-encoding it as another highly compressed format. As FCPX.guru said, uploading ProRes 422 to Youtube will produce the best quality.

If ProRes is too large to upload you can export as ProRes 422, then use Handbrake to transcode to H.264/HEVC at various bit rate and quality settings. FCPX can export to 8-bit HEVC but it's only a fixed setting and cannot be adjusted.

With Handbrake it's possible you could achieve a good quality HEVC transcode from ProRes, yet would still be small enough to upload.

Your Youtube version is (1) Only HD not 4k, and (2) Has been re-encoded and is playing at an unknown streaming rate.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Youtube is throttling their bit rate. Supposedly this was only changing the default to SD but maybe they are doing other things. If you right-click on the Youtube screen and pick "Stats for Nerds" you can get some idea of the streaming codec and bit rate at your location.