Compressor 4.1 and MyCometG3 x264

[Craig Seeman]

Compressor 4.1 now does High Profile CABAC H.264 encoding although apparently limited to signal pass.

[Daniel Ludwig]

and no more DVD-presets!

[Russ Haskell]

And much faster single pass mov and mp4 h.264 encoding.

https://www.larryjordan.biz/compressor-4-1-hardware-acceleration/

Russ

[Jeremy Garchow]

Huh.

Compressor looks to have received a little attention. Nice!

I’m also wondering what is going to happen with the new export API.

Will this mean I can connect to Episode straight from FCPX?

That’d be cool.

[Craig Seeman]

and following on that article is this one.
https://www.larryjordan.biz/mac-pro-performance-report-video-compression/

Note that single pass hardware accelerated H.264 encoding is specific to i5 and i7 processors as they have Intel’s “QuickSync.” The New Mac Pro Xeons do NOT.

[Dave Gage]

[Craig Seeman] “Note that single pass hardware accelerated H.264 encoding is specific to i5 and i7 processors as they have Intel’s “QuickSync.””

Craig,

Would only apply to H.264 or also x264? I’m on a i7 17″ MBP and faster encodes would give me a legit reason to move from 3.5.3 to 4.1.

Thanks,
Dave

[Craig Seeman]

I’m not sure about MyComet x264 since it’s a Quicktime Component and Apple has moved to CoreMedia. I certainly wouldn’t make MyComet a major factor in a decision. More important may be comparing Apple’s High Profile CABAC encode (single pass only) compared to that x264 in both speed and quality.

My own guess is that when Apple does the next OS upgrade later this year (they are supposedly on a yearly schedule now), Quicktime Components won’t work at all.

[Keith Pratt]

Reading StreamingMedia’s Compressor 4.1 First Look has put me off… If this is accurate I can’t feel confident of getting consistent results. Surely that’s fundamental to any encoding software?!

[Craig Seeman]

Reading through it, this is what I glean.

Generally Single Pass High Profile CABAC encoding will give you near (but not quite) x264 quality. Most notable on high motion clips. On low motion clips Multi Pass CAVLC encoding may yield better quality. I’d also note that Jan tested on a computer which did not have hardware acceleration (only on i5 and i7, not Xeon… this is probably due to Intel’s “QuickSync” technology). So we’re not sure if hardware acceleration has a negative impact on quality. He also mentions that in general the quality is better in 4.1 than in 4 (probably due to adding High Profile and CABAC entropy but maybe other tweaks to the encoder).

The “illogics” are:
No CABAC encoding on multi pass.
Not clear why single pass is often better than multi pass encoding.