Compressor and final cut pro

[Jerry Hofmann]

Well what I do is export a non self contained QT movie from FCP, then import that file into Compressor… that way it doesn’t stop FCP from running.

Jerry

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Author: “Jerry Hofmann on Final Cut Pro 4” Click here

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[Jeffrey Levenstone]

Dear Jerry Hofmann,

That is an extremly a good idea.

Thanks for your reply.

Jeffrey levenstone

[Chris Babbitt]

The word is that you get the best quality by exporting directly from FCP. Is this not true?

[Bdr]

Technically, Export -> Using Compressor is better but you may not notice the difference because of a) MPEG 2’s compression artifacts and b) the quality of your source footage and the codec you use on the timeline. The better the timeline’s codec the less sense it makes to use Export -> Using Compressor. You’ll most likely notice the difference when using 4:1:1 DV with thin lined graphics overlayed.

What happens with Export -> Using Compressor is that FCP will hand each frame separetely to Compressor. The frames are uncompressed or rather, the same process as the one to create a render file is used minus the recompression at the end. This means that the source footage is decompressed, all filters (if any) are applied and the result is sent to Compressor. For a normal render, this frame would be recompressed to the codec of the sequence.

This means that Export -> Using Compressor is functionally equivalent to bumping your sequence to Uncompressed, exporting to an Uncompressed Quicktime movie and importing that movie in Compressor. Export -> Using Compressor saves you the diskspace required for Uncompressed, at the expense of time. Final Cut Pro will be busy during the export ’cause it has to do all the decompression and rendering over again.