FCP Quality Issues

First of all, deselect de-interlacing in mpegstream clip, jesus.

Its how you're exporting it. You need to export as a quicktime movie or using quicktime compression. Export as h.264 medium to high quality. I export full quality from FCP and compress in quicktime pro, which is easy to acquire.

The export settings using the share function are set to h.264 high quality, but I will give it a shot just exporting to Quicktime normally as opposed to using that.. thanks for the suggestion.

Oh and maybe im retarded but by "de-select deinterlacing" did you mean select deinterlacing or de-select interlacing? By default it has Interlaced Scaling checked and Deinterlace video unchecked . . . so switch that up or have neither checked?

You just dont need to de-interlace progressive footage, thats all.

i sometimes wonder what would happen without eheath answering fc questions

Transcoding
First of all, don't use ProRes 422 HQ. It literally adds nothing to footage shot in 4:2:0 that ProRes LT won't add. In short, transcoding to ProRes 422 LT will give you the exact same quality with smaller file sizes. If anything, HQ will look worse because you are creating extra color space for native data that doesn't initially exist, so basically don't do it!

Interlaced scaling/frame rates are irrelevant. You are shooting tapeless progressive frame rates, interlaced settings don't concern you.

These should be your MPEGstreamclip settings:

Codec: Apple ProRes 422 LT
Interlaced Scaling: off
Frame Size: Unscaled

Everything else should be set at default.

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Cinema Tools
Since you're shooting in progressive mode, why not work in 24 fps aka (23.98 fps since we're talking digital). Slow motion is supposed to be played back at 24fps anyways. Conforming 60p footage to 24fps looks much more natural than 60p played back at 30fps.

For the record, when I say conform to 24 fps, I really mean conform to 23.98 fps.

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Grading
Grading is such a subjective and at times complex part of image processing, so I'm going to keep it incredibly brief here.

Steps:
1. Color correct footage before grading anything. Use 3-Way Color Corrector to set white points in the black, mid, and highs. This is crucial because any grading you do is based off of the initial color data, and if you don't consistently have the proper white balance, the process can be a huge pain that yields an inconsistent grade.
2. Once you start grading, set black and white points first. These serve as an "anchor" for your gamma (mid) adjustment. Use the histogram to ensure that you aren't clipping.
3. Adjust gamma to preference.
4. The artistic direction of grading is where it gets complex. There are many different processes and styles to do this, but a tried-and-true great looking method is to use Monet's theory of complimentary colors: shadows should be complimentary to mids. If you have a warm image, make the shadows blue (or analogous) to add chromatic contrast. Another cool and optional technique is to make the highlights tertiary colors, so in this case the highlights could be a voilet hue.

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Export
I'm going to use Vimeo export settings since no self-respecting filmmaker uses Youtube.

Codec: h.264
Framerate: current
Key Frames: current
Bit Rate: anywhere from 6500 - 8000
Multi-Pass (best quality)
Frame Size: 1280 x 720
Audio: AAC
Quality: Best
Bitrate: 320 kbps

If there's any settings I didn't list, leave them at default.

dude thank you very much for this

thanks Heath too.

you guys have no idea how those threads are useful for video noobs who are actually trying to do a decent job and to learn.

just thanks guys.

Thanks for the help guys. Definitely appreciative and want to learn all I can.

marking this for threads incase Im ever not lazy..

Ya i shot with go pro as well and find converting in mpeg streamclip can save a lot of time a quality.