• Compression Techniques

  Compressor trouble

  Posted by John Desay on February 4, 2009 at 6:24 pm

  Hi guys,

  I’m new to this forum so just a quick question for anyone who might be able to help….
  I’m using Final cut Studio 2 on new iMac,2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo,4GB RAM,G2 RAID.
  I recently cut a short of 23 mins in duration and wanted to encode with Compressor to make a master DVD for screening with DVD Studio Pro.I didn’t export from FCP using Compressor as i’ve heard that if
  you export using QuickTime and not create a self contained movie that the reference file will encode much quicker.I exported the QT file using PHOTO-JPEG at 98% to ensure maximum quality from FCP.
  My Compressor setting are as follows…

  VIDEO FORMAT

  FORMAT: PAL
  FIELD DOMINANCE: PROGRESSIVE

  QUALITY

  AVGE BIT RATE: 6.2
  MAX BIT RATE: 7.7

  FRAME CONTROLS: ON

  RESZ FILTER BEST
  OUTP FIELDS PROG
  DEINTER BEST

  RATE CONVERS
  BETTER

  I thought these settings would be fine to ensure best quality but after 2 days my batch History remains at 202:16:20..
  Should it take this long for a 23 minute short or am i doing something drastically wrong?
  Any help would be much appreciated..

  Cheers,

  john

  Daniel Low replied 17 years, 3 months ago 3 Members · 6 Replies
• 6 Replies

• 

  Daniel Low

  February 4, 2009 at 7:33 pm

  Confusion:

  “I didn’t export from FCP using Compressor as i’ve heard that if
  you export using QuickTime and not create a self contained movie that the reference file will encode much quicker.I exported the QT file using PHOTO-JPEG at 98% to ensure maximum quality from FCP. ”

  By exporting as PhotoJPEG, you DID export a self contained movie, a reference movie uses the exact same settings as your sequence.

  Although your compressor settings are maxed out that time is too long and it looks like it’s crashed (as usual).

  Quit the job – restart everything and try again.

  __________________________________________________________________
  Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!
• 

  John Desay

  February 4, 2009 at 9:52 pm

  Thanks for the reply so quick daniel.I wasn’t aware that if you change the current settings in QuickTime when exporting from FCP that you do in actual fact create a self contained file.If i export from QuickTime using the current setting(which are 1080i50),will i still get maximum quality when encoded as opposed to something like PHOTO-JPEG which i’ve heard is near flawless-and is it true it will encode faster as it is just working off the reference file?
  Also how do you know when Compressor has crashed when its still encoding in the History?

  Thanks again for the reply…

  john.
• 

  Daniel Low

  February 4, 2009 at 11:06 pm

  You’ll know that compressor has crashed if it doesn’t make any progress in a day, or even several hours.

  What video format are you working with?

  __________________________________________________________________
  Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!
• 

  John Desay

  February 4, 2009 at 11:09 pm

  HDV 1080i PAL
• 

  Craig Seeman

  February 4, 2009 at 11:12 pm

  I’ve learned to keep the Activity Monitor open when using Compressor.
• 

  Daniel Low

  February 5, 2009 at 12:03 pm

  You can’t improve the quality of your source by converting it to another codec, even uncompressed. When you export by reference, compressor reads the exact source files from your drive, the same source files used in FCP.

  However you can improve the encoding performance (speed) by transcoding to another codec. PhotoJPEG would be a good choice in that case but leave the quality slider at 75%.

  (PhotoJPEG is 4:4:4 @ 100%, 4:2:2 @ >75%, and 4:2:0 @ <74%.)

  __________________________________________________________________
  Please post back saying what solved your problem. It could help others, and saying ‘thanks’ is free!

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