In this tutorial, we'll discuss how to create a master file. A master file is a general term used in post-production to describe the file used for archival or high-end distribution scenarios, such as film festivals or sharing with other professionals. We'll explore finding the "Share" button, how to export a ProRes 422 file, and monitoring the progress. In Final Cut, open project 702. This is a rough cut of our story district promo video to export. Click the "Share Destinations" button in the upper right corner to see multiple options depending on where you want to send the video. In this case, we just want to create a high-quality copy of our final project and put it on the desktop. To do that, select "Master File." The window that pops up is split into three sections: Info, Settings, and Roles. Info lets us adjust some of the information that will be embedded in the QuickTime file metadata. Change the name to "Story District Promo v1." Down below, you can see some of the details of the file that will be produced. It will be 1920 by 1080 and 23.98 frames per second, because it matches our project properties. It will be stereo, about a minute and a half long, and will be put inside a QuickTime container. Final Cut estimates that it will be about 1.41 gigabytes in size. Next, click "Settings" to see if there's anything we want to customize. You could change the format, but we'll talk about some of these options in a later tutorial. As for the codec, "Apple ProRes 422" is the current default option, because it matches our projects render codec settings. There are even higher codec settings available such as Apple ProRes 422 HQ or Apple ProRes 4444, but are usually used only in high-end production workflows, such as a shot with a camera supporting 10-bit or higher color or other professional grade cameras. Most of the time, ProRes 422 is sufficient for most users archival needs. So leave it as that. You can tell Final Cut what to do with the final after exporting. By default, it's going to open with QuickTime player, but for this, select "Do nothing." The third tab, "Roles," will allow you to export closed captions or adjust certain components of the video. This will be covered more in another tutorial so we'll leave it as is. Click "Next" to name the video and choose where to save it. Click "Save," and the export process begins. To see how long it will take, click on the background tasks button up top to bring up a little window that shows how long the export process is actually going to take. When it's done, close the background tasks window. Go to your desktop and you'll see the exported file. Double-click it to open in QuickTime, and you'll see the video looks fantastic. In most cases, you should see no discernible difference between the frames in this exported video and the original frames in the original clip. In QuickTime, you can go to the "Window" menu, and bring up the "Movie Inspector," which will give some details about the video. You can see which codec is being used, the size of the file, and the bit rate is nearly 100 megabits per second, which is quite high for most video files. Thus a good-looking video, but a larger file size. One thing to remember with Master files is that they aren't widely compatible with most consumer devices. You're not going to be able to easily put it on an iPhone or Android tablet. This is really used for high-end production environments, and usually only high-end software will be able to play back the video clips. For creating files for distribution, you'll want to watch the next tutorial. In this tutorial, we discussed creating a master file by going to the Share button, exporting a ProRes 422 file, how to monitor the progress of the exporting, and took a look at file details afterward. Next, we'll explore creating a file for distribution by creating an h.264 file.
