Exported file WAY to large!

Question

Hello!
I just bought Final Cut Pro some weeks ago, som Im a total rookie at this software.
I taped a concert for a local band a few weeks ago with my Zoom Q3HD. They played for aprox. 30 minutes.
I edited the video (it was originally 50minutes long in total, cut away 20 minutes).
But when I export it, it turns into XX-gigabytes
How is this happening? Even in H.264 it´s 5GB! Thats to big for YouTube!
I taped my own concert in HD with tha same camera, and it was about 52 minutes. That worked fine. BUT! That was not edited in Final Cut Pro, since I´ve just bought it. It was edited in Avid Studio.
So my question is simply:
How do I export the file in good quality for YouTube, in Final Cut Pro, at size less then 2GB?

Answer 1

Xathan,
Exporting a 30 minute HD video can lead to very large double digit gigabyte files depending on your export settings. If you just leave it to FCPX to export using project settings, then you could be looking at upwards of 20+ GB. Even if you try the simple Export for YouTube command, the built-in bitrate settings (that cannot be changed within FCPX) will still yield a large size because the bitrate setting is still too high for a 30 minute movie.
What you'll need to do is use an encoding program such as Compressor, or Adobe Media Encoder to compress the video file to a more manageable size. This used to be accomplished in earlier versions of Final Cut Pro, but the powers that be thought it wise to change that.
The key is to change your bitrate settings to be as low as possible without sacrificing quality too much. 2000kbps might work for you. The other setting to tweak is the frame size. 1280x720 is still HD but not overkill like 1080p for youtube. You should also make sure that if your camera recorded at 60 frames per second, then that needs to change to 30fps when compressing.
Good luck.