Compressor – no specified variable bitrate?

[Nicole Haddock]

From what I’m seeing, you can either choose one of their presets of Low, Med, High or choose a constant bit rate at whatever you specify. Sorenson Squeeze is definitely the better compression tool when it comes to punting footage to the web, in my experience.

[Naiche Lujan]

Thank you Nicole.

I am beginning to feel the same way as you. I am used to Sorenson Squeeze.

However, here is my problem. I have my copy of Sorenson Squeeze installed on a Windows machine. When I export in either ProRes 422 or Uncompressed 10-bit, Sorenson says it does not support that format. Is this something where I can manualy add those codecs to the Windows machine?

As a rule, I try to give Sorenson the best quality file to compress from, so what would you recommend I export from FCP so that I can retain quality?

[Nicole Haddock]

Hmm, that’s a bit of a tough one then. What’s your source footage and what are the sequence settings you edited in? Pro-res is an FCP codec, but I didn’t think Uncompressed would have issues. Did you try doing a short export of an Uncompressed 8-bit version? I rarely do anything with 10-bit video, maybe that’s an issue. You could also try a short clip exported at Animation.

[David Roth weiss]

[Naiche Lujan] “When I export in either ProRes 422 or Uncompressed 10-bit, Sorenson says it does not support that format.”

Naiche,

Here’s the answer to you problem, at least for ProRes.

https://support.apple.com/downloads/Apple_ProRes_QuickTime_Decoder_1_0_for_Windows

For 10-bit you can install the codecs from Kona or Blackmagic on your Windows box without one of the cards.

David Roth Weiss
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David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

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[Naiche Lujan]

Source footage was imported with a Blackmagic NTSC – Apple ProRes (HQ) setting.
Sequence is set to Apple ProRes 422 NTSC 48 kHz.

I’ll try 8-bit as you mentioned. Maybe I can contact Sorenson and have them move the activation to the Mac, it is going to be quite annoying. I thought I would be able to do everything in Compressor.

In the meantime, I used a DV stream, and that seems to be working and is okay, but not great.

Thanks

[Naiche Lujan]

Interestingly, when I tried to install the ProRes decoder for Windows, it said that there was a later version found on the computer. I suppose this has to do with the fact that I have already installed the latest version of iTunes on the Windows box.

So, if I have the latest version of ProRes, then why is Sorenson complaining? Maybe I should be contacting Sorenson for an answer.

Spoke with Blackmagic and they told me to install the driver package on the Windows box that contains the codecs.

After installing this pacakge, I still could not use the 10-bit. However they said that I might have to use 8-bit.

[Naiche Lujan]

So, actually I found out how to do what I wanted in Compressor, thanks to Lynda.com and some poking around.

I was under deadline, so that is why I was trying to figure out this issue. Now all is good.

I do find Squeeze slightly easier to create the custom presets. However, as I learn more about Compressor, it seems very good and customizable as well, but with less options probably.

I do like the ability to do Virtual Clustering, being able to take advantage of the multicore Mac Pro with other codecs. It about dang time!

Thanks again for the troubleshooting.