What should I do to finish up entire movie?

Question

I finally finished a feature length project for the first time using FCP5.
Here are my questions.
1. RENDER- I rendered all. But there are parts which are still green. Do I have to render this all? I don't quite understand, the status-green.
2. Audio- Some audio parts have blue line on the clips. Can I leave it like this?
3. Level- What is the best way to check audio peak, and video broadcast safe?
Do I have to watch entire movie and check those levels one by one?
4. Best audio level- I understand audio level has to be below 0 db. But what is the best audio level? In other words, what is considered too low?
5. Is there anything else to do before export the movie?
It sounds stupid questions, but I can't find answers...
Please help me...
Thank you.
G5   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Answer 1

Congratulations on finishing your project.
1. Make sure that "Preview" (green bar) has a checkmark beside it under your Sequence> Render Selection and Render All menus. That will get rid of the unrendered portions of your project that have the green line above them in the timeline.
2. Do you mean a blue line at the top of the sequence on the audio clips? Or a blue line on the clip itself? You can do an Audio Mixdown under the Sequence> Render Only menu (or option + apple + R) to ensure all of your audio is rendered and mixed.
3. Check your audio level on the FCP meters should suffice- you'll ouput based on the media you're going to. Are you exporting it to a self-contained Quicktime file, or outputting to tape? For example if you're going out to a DVCAM deck, place NTSC Bars and Tone on your timeline and set the tone to -12dB (or -20, depending on your application), then set the deck to record at that level based on the reference tone...
3a. You can check your video levels through the Video Scopes under the Tools menu, although a proper external waveform monitor is always nice. I'm going to assume you don't have one though or you wouldn't have asked.
4. Generally, you want your audio averaging at around -12dB, peaking at -6. Digital audio will clip at 0dB.
5. There's a lot more you can do to wrap up, such as Media Managing the project and organizing yourself, etc., but it's too much to go over here. or rather I guess it's too much for me to think about right now. I'm sure you'll get some more suggestions from others, but you can use this as a basic rundown.
Good luck!
Joni