Why your exports look worse than your timeline
You spent hours editing and grading, then YouTube made it look like soup. Nine times out of ten the problem isn't YouTube's compression. It's what you fed it. Here are the exact settings I use after a decade of client delivery.
The settings for YouTube
The counterintuitive trick: upload in 4K even when your project is 1080p. YouTube gives 4K uploads the better VP9 codec, and your viewers get a visibly cleaner image.
The settings for client delivery
Clients get ProRes 422, not H.264. Bigger files, but no generation loss when they re-encode for their own platforms. Full breakdown in the video above.
Want your footage to look this good before export?
The FCP Color Grading Masterclass takes you from flat footage to confident, professional grades. Featured on Apple's official Final Cut Pro Resources page.
Explore the MasterclassThe settings for Instagram & social
Vertical crops, bitrate ceilings, and the safe-area gotchas. Watch from 4:12 in the video for the full social export workflow.
