How to Upscale and Export Video from HD to 4K in Final Cut Pro X

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How to correctly upscale and export your project from HD to 4K in Final Cut Pro! Exporting your project in 4K will allow your video to be properly scaled to fit a 4K display. Additionally, it is shown that upscaling from HD to 4K before you upload to YouTube, will not only allow viewers to select 4K as a quality option. But also, because YouTube detects the video as a 4K file, it will give the video a higher playback bitrate. Ultimately resulting in sharper image quality! Here is the example clip that we're working with today and this is a fashion film. You can see this is a hd file with a resolution of 1920 by 1080. Let's change this to 4k. Import the video like you would any other video. Create a new event, once the video has imported this will now be listed under our new event. Go under file select new and then project, select the use custom settings button, this will allow you to change the video format from 1080p to 4k 8k or even 360 or actually also a custom size and this is what will allow you to even create videos formatted for instagram or tiktok. For now select 4k. There are some different options under the 4k preset however i'm going to go with the standard 3840x2160. Let's drag the clip into the new project, expand this view by pressing shift z and you'll notice above the clip we have these dotted lines which indicates that it has to be rendered. This is because the upscaling hasn't happened yet so let's let this render. Now as FCP is rendering it is actually upscaling the footage bringing it from 1080p to 4k. After rendering we can now play this back in 4K. Now, to export it in 4k, go to the share menu and select master file as this gives best options. We have the option to change the title and we can also add a description or creator tags. Let’s go ahead and take a look at settings this is where we get to the codec now as standard final cut will export this as a apple prores 422 file which will give you a very high quality export you'll notice the file size is very large. If you're uploading to youtube let's say we are this is not an ideal preset as this will have very long upload times so we're going to go ahead and change this to h.264 now this is a slightly more compressed video codec however this will make massive difference in terms of file size and will retain much of the quality including the resolution and frame rate so let's go ahead and select this. As you can see this brings the file size down significantly to only 417 megabytes. That’s all the settings we're going to change let's go ahead and select our destination. Alright so the video has now finished exporting let's go back to that same folder and here we have the newly exported 4k version, resolution of 3840 by 2160. We can play this back and it will play back smoothly this time of course scaled properly for a 4k display and again when uploaded to youtube will be played back in a higher bit rate.

Thank you for watching, let me know if you have any questions.
Dion Schuddeboom
DionVideoProductions

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[JasonCramer]

I am really unclear about this procedure - whether it really "upscales" the image quality. It seems like it would merely give it a larger file size, but leave the image quality the same. Real upscaling would involve doing some kind of image enhancement like for example when you perform ML Super Resolution in Pixelmator Pro on a static image. Now that PmP can work with video, I tried it with one, but it doesn't seem to have any affect on it whatsoever. Maybe in a later version they'll add this ability.

[vinyleyezz]

Just what I needed! Straight forward and to the point! thank you!

[devmyself]

Thank you so much for this comprehensive guide on upscaling to 4K. Cheer!

[joelsonJCA]

the minecraft icon on the dock adds the best detail

[rapaent]

Thank you for this awesome tutorial! I shoot mainly in 4K 60fps and 30fps. I have some 1080p footage that I would like to use with my 4K. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Simply upscale the 1080 as shown to 4K > render > export to a file then drop it in a 4K project/timeline and I'll be good to go to mix both? Also, in regards to mixing 4K frame rates, what would you suggest? Thanks again. 👍😊.

[onemoretimetexas]

Thank you for this valuable advice. This technique will achieve our objectives: use the HD format for its smaller file size, and allow YouTube viewers the best results. Thanks also for your well organized and presented material.

[PilatesStrong]

WOW best tutorial on this that I have found. So concise, and in laymen's terms thank you so much for keeping it clear concise but with lots of substance thank you! HUGE help as now I can create 4K content without uploading massive files!

[jyrmaine]

Thank you soooo very much! This was so informative and straight to the point!!!! You saved my vlogs!!!! -Jyrmaine

[CadenceFilmsInc]

Thanks, I just got a new Mac and forgot how to set this part up.

[Samlol_drrich]

That was great. Short, sweet, and to the point. Subscribed. Thank you.

[ghosttactique]

little question. When I export a video in 4K and publish it on youtube, it publishes it in 1080P60 instead of 4K. How can I fix this

[twistedducati]

Thank you for this very helpful information! I wasn't able to drag my project down into the new 4k timeline because it was crossed out, but I was able to "Duplicate Project As" from a right click of the original project and then selected 4k from my options. Once that was done, I saw the timeline start the render and I was good to go! Must be due to some changes with the latest version of the software, but your solution got me on the right track.

[Wellington.Gonzalez]

Hell Of a job video editing is, I'll make sure to charge good money cuz not every person has the machines we have

[madanmohanGopaji]

Hello, I have a doubt, My clients ask me 4k in Mp4 format, Recently i worked on wedding proj in 1080p,
My question to you is, Can i convert 1080p Mov to 4k Mp4 Format (h.265).

[vidsbyjeremy]

Would you have to do the same thing if you Mixed 1080p with 4K in editing to Render it to still be 4K? (if that makes sense)

[TheMentalHealthToolbox]

Thanks! Cant wait to give it a try when my new M1max comes MacBook Pro arrives in a couple weeks

[patricksanderson]

Hi, thanks for the video. That is really interesting.

I've just got a new camera that shoots in 4K. Unfortunately my old MacBook struggles with the footage when I open it in a 4K project in Final Cut. I don't have any problems if I drop the footage in a 1080p project.

Can I put the footage in a 1080p project then export it in 4K at the end?

I hope that makes sense....

Cheers

[LucyLeheilleix]

Very helpful video. Thanks very much :)

[MayurMahapatraFilms]

Bro.. I just subscribed.. very nice content.. I am Final Cut Pro user and want to learn from your channel. 🤟🤟

[FreeTimeSpacken]

erstmal danke digga!

Lohnt es sich direkt in dem format zu schneiden etc? also wenn ich mit hd material ankomme und es dann in das Projekt lade. oder erst hd schnitt dann rendern und dan nochmal da rein?