Final Cut Pro - Exporting issue

Hi guys,

I'm a Music and Audio technology student and, as such, I'm not really familiar with FCP so I'm having some difficulties with it.
I have to replace the audio for a film clip for a project I'm doing and all I have left to do is create a high quality version of the video for submission (I used a low bit-rate video for editing in Pro Tools so it wouldn't lag too much).

I have a 4 minute clip which I've trimmed to 1 min and put a fade in/out at either end. In the FCP viewer it looks pretty good quality and the aspect ratio is correct but when I try to export it I run into problems.
Either the resolution looks jaggy or there are visible artefacts or it stretches the clip into 4:3.

I've tried just exporting as a Quicktime file but the files come out huge (3Gb for a 1 min clip!) and it stutters or freezes and the aspect ratio isn't right.
I've tried using Compressor with every setting I could think of but I still couldn't get an acceptable quality video.
I wouldn't have thought it would be so difficult to just export a video at the same quality it was imported at!

I'd very much appreciate some advice as this is starting to drive me nuts now!
Thanks in advance

Perhaps I can simplify my question somewhat; is there an easy way to import a clip, trim it, then simply export it at the same quality as it was imported?

To do what you suggested in your second post you need to;
Import the video and then drag into onto a new sequence, FCP should ask you if you want to match the clips settings. Click yes.
Trim your video and then select export, Quicktime Movie. This will export your video with the same timeline settings, which should be the same as your clip. Hope this helps.

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately that's pretty much what I was doing, although it doesn't ask me anything when I import a clip onto a new sequence.
When I export as a Quicktime movie (I assume I should leave it as "Current Settings") it looks kind of pixelated and full of artifacts.

Yeah you should leave the settings on current settings. To check your sequence settings press cmd+0, then compare the settings in here to the clips settings in the browser window. Hopefully you will spot any differences, then try changing the sequence settings to match the clips. Aside from that the artifacts may be occurring because the original video is not great quality.