exporting clip in Final Cut Pro X or related video editing software on Mac

Question

I'm using Final Cut Pro X to edit a 1 hour long video. I made individual clips from it in Final Cut Pro X and I want to save just these clips, some of which are only 5 mins long. How can I do this?

I tried using the app ClipExporter, but it won't even read my .fcpxml file, it just says that it's not a valid file and gives no helpful information at all.

Another method I tried was to assign roles to each clip. I made one clip, 5 mins long, and then used Share -> Export in Final Cut Pro X and chose the option to export roles as separate files. However, the export still estimates that it will take over an hour to export and so it looks like it's trying to export the whole movie, rather than the simple 5 min clip which should be exportable as a .MOV or related formats in a few minutes.

How can I do this in final cut pro x? I'm also happy to switch to related video editing software as long as they are not extremely expensive. This seems like a very trivial and obvious feature: take a segment from a long movie and export just the selected region of it... I don't understand why it's so complicated to do in Final Cut Pro X.

Thanks.

Answer 1

ClipExporter should help you with exporting your clips. The messages "Not a valid project file" only appears if your fcpxml file does´t contain any project (timeline). That´s the case when you (maybe accidentally) exported an Event instead of your project.

Answer 2

The answer is that, surprisingly, iMovie can easily let you make clips and export only them although I cannot find a way to do this in Final Cut Pro. This is surprising since iMovie is supposedly a cheaper / less sophisticated version of Final Cut Pro.

To do this in iMovie, you can mark your clip region and paste it into the events window. Then copy and paste it into a new project and export only that.

If someone knows of a way to do this in FCP, I'd be interested to know. I could not find an easy to way to copy and paste just a clip segment into a whole new project in FCP.

Answer 3

It sounds like you have imported a video that is not optimised for video editing and FCPX is trying to covert the entire hour of footage before it starts thinking about exporting the bit that you want to output.

If you can open it in FCPX then you should also be able to open it in QuickTime Player X (free download from Apple website if you don't have the latest installed) which enables you to Edit>Trim (cmd-T) your clip to the bit you want and then simply choose File>Save As… to save the trimmed clip with a new name.

Answer 4

You can use Compressor if you just need a flew clips. You can set in and out points and sending to compressor from fcpx. in FCP X, senf to compressor. Add you setting in compressor, like prores 422 HQ or something. Go in to the viewer and set the IN (I key) and out (O key) and then submit it. do that fpr each clip. If you have your clips marked with markers in fcpx they will show up in compressor so this would go fairly quickly. I too am looking for a way to use markers as way to automate export segments of a single timeline. There has to be some way to do it in compressor.

The ghetto way would be to mark your clips as chapters, export ("share" in FCPX terms) as a bluray or dvd disc image to your hard drive, and then use handbrake, streamclip, or one of the other ripping programs out there that can easily export chapters into separate files.