Compression time too long- want high (ish) quality for youtube, but <24 hour compression

[Craig Seeman]

YouTube’s recommended encoding specs
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1722171?rd=1

Shooting progressive is a major help. Deinterlacing takes time.
For best quality I’d create my own present based on YouTube’s specs although Compressor can’t do High Profile CABAC encoding.

You don’t mention your workflow but generally I export from FCPX in ProRes 422 rather than send to Compressor. It’s just an old habit and it gives me a ProRes master.
Creating an internal cluster in Compressor can help if you haven’t done that.
I’d have Frame Reorder On but I don’t think that’s going to help your encoding speed. It does help a bit in terms of quality relative to bit rate as it adds B-frames which are more efficient.

Compressor isn’t very fast though and I’d hope Apple improves GPU assisted encoding on the next upgrade.

Your computer specs make a big difference. Generally I’d recommend at least a Quad i7 (newer is better) and 2GB RAM per core of the computer.

[Kirsten Dirksen]

Thanks Craig. Though you’ve also helped me realize how limited my tech knowledge is. I realized I”d just skimmed the part of the youtube specs page about CABAC… I won’t even ask.

Though I am curious as to a few more points. I used to export staright from final cut studio and I just used an automatic data rate and set the quality to best. Within Compressor you still have that option within video settings. My compression times used to be just 2 or 3 hours and now it’s an hour or so to lay off to prores (yes, that is also my workflow) and then another half day or day to compress within Compressor. Would I lose a lot of quality to simple go back to this automatic setting? And is this the same thing as the recommended variable bit rate suggestion?

I just changed my setting from best quality (multi-pass) to faster encode (single-pass) as I read that this didn’t make a big difference in quality, but does greatly help compression time.

I think my main issue is my computer is old.. a 2008 MacBook Pro (2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8GB RAM). I need to upgrade, but I’m trying to wait it out for the MacBook Pro with the Hawell chip.

Thanks for the motivation to switch to progressive for filming. I think I was afraid of all the hundreds of hours of archive tape shot interlaced, but I know you can now mix the 2 in Final Cut when I want to use archived footage.