fcp 7 export troubles

Hello!
I love using fcp and struggle getting new work to export from my projects. here's the details.
I am running fcp 7 on a Hackintosh with 2.4GHz Quad Core Intel Xem. It's OSX 10.6.8 and the memory is 8 gb 800 MHz DDR2 SDRam
The FCP 7 is 7.0.3 (2009) and I installed it about 10 years ago. My projects are simple interviews with images overtop, nothing fancy. My latest project is 45 minutes long. I shot it on a Canon Vixia HF G10.
My problem is with the export. When I take it out to a Quicktime file it's 44 gigs. This seems very big but then it is HD. When I try to save it through quicktime conversion the file looks very choppy and is basically useless. I have 2 final destinations for this project- one is on DVD for some older viewers and the other is suitable size and format for vimeo. At the moment I have to put it on a shared drive so my buddy can get it down to a resonable size on his machine (not a mac). I really would like to do this myself (and he is getting more than a bit grumpy!) Any suggestions you can give would be excellent! Thanks!
Fran

hi Fran.

what i do is export as a self contained quicktime. yes it's large, but it's a master.
then i run that thru compressor, or mpeg streamclip, or more recently, resolve,
to make an h264, or whatever.

if you don't need that large master file, you can export from FCP as a reference movie.
this really only saves you space if you've fully rendered the sequence.
If you haven't, the render files will kind of go into the reference file and it'll be just as large,
AND you'll have the down-side of reference files to boot.
the downside is that, as they refer to existing media, including render files,
they can become useless if any of that media goes or moves.
so, they're OK if you just want to do a quick down-res or whatever,
but think of them like this: if you need it in a week, do self-contained.

after a certain amount of time, if I'm running out of space,
i might go and delete older self-contained exports.
i do have the sequences they're exported from.
(i archive them in separate projects)


cheers,
nick