Compress or not?

[Bret Williams]

What’s wrong with compressor? Haven’t heard anything bad, and the new interface is nice. But you can do what you want right from X. Share master file and share YouTube.

[David Mathis]

Nothing that I am aware of. Just was reading the reviews in the App store. I apologize for having gone off the deep end.

[Morten]

The interface did use to be unpleasant. Haven’t tried the new version, since I’m now going with Adobe instead…

– No Parking Production –

2 x Finalcut Studio3, 2 x Prod. bundle CS6, 2 x MacPro, 2 x ioHD, Ethernet File Server w. X-Raid…. and FCPX on trial

[Steve Connor]

Nothing wrong with Compressor for web encoding, it’s not the fastest out there and there are better encoders for mpeg2 though.

Steve Connor

There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum

[Brett Sherman]

One reason alone that Compressor is worth the $50 is that it is the only way to get custom settings into the Share window in FCP X. I also find I use it to make one-off DVDs when I don’t want to do it through FCP X.

[David Mathis]

Guess it is time for me to jump in with both feet. Only wish that Apple would bundle X, Motion and Compressor together for a slightly lower price. I find Motion as a great value, too.

[Brett Sherman]

While I think Compressor is a worthwhile tool to have in your belt for $50 (same goes for Motion), I currently don’t use it for the type of operation you’re doing.

I export FCP X as a master file (ProRes) for higher quality. Then I drop that file in Turbo.264 software edition (also $50 I believe) to create a compressed MP4 file for uploading. It’s much faster and does a better job of making a small file size while retaining quality. Apple’s H.264 encoder really only works at high bit rates, which means longer upload times.

[Dave Gage]

[Brett Sherman] “Then I drop that file in Turbo.264 software edition (also $50 I believe) to create a compressed MP4 file for uploading.”

Is Turbo using the x264 codec? I’m still on Compressor 3, but I use the x264 codec and I get great results. I’m still not sure where we’re at with H.265.

Thanks,
Dave

[Claude Lyneis]

I use compressor prior to uploading to either Youtube or Vimeo and like to be able to set bit rate. Still uncertain what the best choices are, because it is hard to tell what happens after Youtube works it over and different users have wildly different internet download speeds.

[Brett Sherman]

No it doesn’t. But I did a few tests with a trial version of Episode with x264 and found that x264 took longer but didn’t produce noticeably better results. But this is all subjective of course. I do think Turbo.264 hit the nail on the head for quality:speed:bit-rate balance.

I haven’t tried x264 on Compressor. Didn’t know it was there. Is it an add-on? I have no doubt it beats Apple’s H.264 implementation which has always been rather crappy.