Results tagged “compressor” from Final Cut Studio, Avid, Adobe, and Video Streaming

There are a few ways to get your project from Final Cut into Compressor, whether you're producing a DVD, preparing a Quicktime movie for the Web, or prepping a clip for Apple TV. Lots of folks prefer to export a Quicktime movie from FCP, then import it into Compressor; others use the Export Using Compressor feature in FCP6. Going through a Quicktime movie noticeably reduces the quality of Compressor's output, but Final Cut Pro 6 makes using the superior Export To Compressor option fairly painful.

Our advice has changed with the new Final Cut Pro 7 upgrade, which has dramatically improved Final Cut's output workflow.

With the new upgrade, there's no longer a good excuse to sacrifice quality by exporting video to a Quicktime movie before bringing it into Compressor.

You can find more compression settings articles in our Supercharging Compressor series index.

If you read our Final Cut to DVD tutorial, you may be wanting to dig a little deeper into the belly of Compressor.  I'll be writing at some length about the video settings in the coming weeks, but for an introduction, let's tweak a setting that's pretty noncontroversial.

Background (skip to Step-By-Step)
Out of the box, Compressor's DVD presets apply fairly aggressive dynamic range compression (see also) to your audio.  If we were only talking audio, we'd call this transformation simply a compressor -- but to avoid confusion, I'll call it a DRC for this article. 

In a nutshell, the DRC makes the loud parts of your audio quieter and the quiet parts louder, for a more consistent level of sound on your viewers' TV sets.  To be fair, DRCs are popular in broadcast media, they're often appropriate for audio that's being delivered specifically to TV sets, and Compressor uses a really solid algorithm from Dolby itself.  On the other hand, audiophiles loathe DRCs, and Compressor's default DRC algorithm is designed for movie theaters rather than DVD players.  If you haven't spent time mastering your audio tracks, you might be pleasantly surprised by the DRC's effects when you prepare your DVD -- but then again, you might not.

Personally, I hate surprises -- and when Compressor substantially modifies my audio without my say-so, I get a little annoyed.  So whether you want to turn the DRC off or just play with its preset values, read on for the (really quick!) step-by-step.

A friend of mine asked me the best way to get his Final Cut sequence on a DVD - and I was surprised to see that we didn't have a GeniusDV tutorial for that!  So here goes:

The textbook "easiest way," of course, is to export your sequence as a Quicktime movie, then drag the Quicktime movie into iDVD.  But that process degrades the quality of your video -- and it wastes the excellent tools that come with Final Cut Studio.

The "right way" doesn't take much more effort -- read on for a step-by-step!

Being able to output with Apple Compressor, and upload in one step is a very useful function. I am guilty of not knowing what Remote meant when I would create a destination for my Compressor projects. Recently I got caught needing to compress a HD Quicktime movie to Mpeg4, and get it loaded up to the internet. The issue was I had to leave for the airport 10 minutes ago. With Compressor I was able to upload it to my iDisk. I started the compression with the iDisc as the destination, and left for the airport. While I was waiting to board my plane I hopped on the internet, downloaded the mpeg4 movie off of my iDisc, put it into an iWeb page, and published it to the web. Being able to output to my iDisk really saved me.

If you are a Final Cut Pro or Avid user, you may be wondering about which software provides the best video encoding options.  If you are serious about encoding videos for the web, you'll want to invest in some video compression software.  Some of the more popular video encoders include: Apple Compressor, Sorenson Squeeze, Episode, and Procoder.

Derrick Freeman, from GeniusDV provides an exlcusive interview with Web Video Universe on how the pros and cons of these compression products.