Overview

I can't tell you how amazed I was when I did my first output from Final Cut Pro in the living room of my apartment. And I was dancing all around the room just as happy as can be.

KEVIN MONAHAN
SF CUTTERS

Once your production is complete it is time to output your movie.

The simplest form of output is to roll record on your camera or deck and then play the movie direct from the Timeline and straight to tape. This is something you should do regularly throughout the editing process to ensure you have a backup of your film should a technical catastrophe or any other sort of problem render your project useless.

I always back up my material to digital tape in the form of several different versions: with and without graphics and effects and with separate audio tracks, both mixed and unmixed. One pass may include voiceover, another music, and another sound effects. By doing backups in this way all of the raw elements of the film are preserved so that in the event of a corrupt file, human error, or power failure, you will be able to rebuild your film from the elements recorded to tape. It takes discipline to back up your work regularly, however, unless you have tremendous amounts of hard drive space, so that you can afford a true backup of all of the project files in the form of data, then backing up to digital tape is the best...