Compressor Output Questions.

[Daniel Low]

[Tom Laughlin] “800KPS/sec”

This should be written 800Kb/s or Kb/sec – it stands for Kilobits per second (Could also be Kilobytes per second but that is generally written KB/s (uppercase ‘B’)

Most people find the best way of moving from FCP to compressor is to export a Quicktime Movie ‘Using Sequence settings’ i.e. exactly the same settings as your source clips.

For quality presets (or for those too lazy to create your own) you can’t beat these:
https://compressorpack.com/

[Tom Laughlin] “Has anyone compared Compressors output to an equal output using Sorenson Squeeze?”

https://www.streamingmedia.com/article.asp?id=11633

[Tom Laughlin] “Also, I had a client in the past say that the file that I emailed to the client, they said it was ‘buffering too much’ and I explained to her that an H.264 800KPS/Sec (QT file totaling 18MB) encoded file sometimes eats up CPU power to play, though it has a great look and extremely low file size capability, does anyone know if I’m correct? “

Files played from the local hard drive do not buffer and even an old PC will have no problem with 800Kb/s H.264.

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[Tom Laughlin]

This is great info, thanks!

Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Salt Lake City, UT
FCS3/Sony EX-3/Mac Intel

[Tom Laughlin]

Has anyone ever used and verified the quality of the “Compressor Pack” software setup plug-ins? I emailed Streaming Media magazine’s editor and he said that although he didn’t have any info, he told me to find my answers in the forums on compression, but I looked for about an hour and found no help or topics associated with my posted questions.

Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Salt Lake City, UT
FCS3/Sony EX-3/Mac Intel

[Daniel Low]

I answer that with a question: Would you know the difference between a ‘bad’ preset and and ‘good’ preset?

A true compressionist, dedicated to his/her art, would create a setting for each different piece of source and target they work with. There is no such thing as one size fits all, you can get very close but that’s all.

Even then, very few can make shitty video look good (I’ve done my time restoring stuff frame by frame). No preset is going to polish a turd.

Your search for reviews on Cram obviously wasn’t done particularly well as when I search on Google the first hit is this:
https://odeo.com/episodes/23725956-FMC-Review-Cram-Makes-Compression-Easy-and-Fast

That review aside, I been told by fellow experts that they highly rate these presets.

At the price they are, you’d have to be a fool not to try them, if you can’t be bothered to experiment or haven’t the time to learn about the parameters it’s a no brainer!

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[Tom Laughlin]

Yea, all good info here, but I just needed the last half of your answer, thanks!

Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Salt Lake City, UT
FCS3/Sony EX-3/Mac Intel

[Tom Laughlin]

If you look at a lot of the articles being written in the “Streaming Media” magazine, or on-line magazine, the latest Compressor over-all H.264 compression reviews aren’t so great, in fact many other people in the magazine reference any other software or hardware, when faced with Compressor and it’s outputs, in comparison to other softwares out there, their speed, image quality, and what I’m researching out and testing with trying to find good bases or foundations to start from, as a ton of people do not have the time to try out and test compression software or build presets, which I’ve done as well numerous times as well. I’m having great success with Compressor, but want to get better. So, with regards to my original post, it’s just a matter of wanting to know who has used CRAM, and if there are “other” specific elements one needs to understand and master, before moving into advanced compression techniques with Compressor, using it to the max. I realize that everyone has to find out their own success with compression, but it doesn’t hurt to share or inquire about what other people are doing and how.

Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Salt Lake City, UT
FCS3/Sony EX-3/Mac Intel

[Daniel Low]

Really? I disagree. You needed the whole of my answer. You just don’t realise it, yet.

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[Daniel Low]

[Tom Laughlin] “So, with regards to my original post, it’s just a matter of wanting to know who has used CRAM”

Like I said, I know respected people who have and rate them highly.

[Tom Laughlin] “and if there are “other” specific elements one needs to understand and master, before moving into advanced compression techniques with Compressor, using it to the max”

Nothing specific, just learn all you can about the parameters of not only the specific codec but also what else the application around it has to offer in terms of pre-processing.

[Tom Laughlin] “but it doesn’t hurt to share or inquire about what other people are doing and how. “

That’s exactly what we are doing; sharing, but we do expect you to also make some effort yourself.

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[Tom Laughlin]

Again, if anyone else besides Dan has a comment or any input on this post, “we” would be much appreciated.

If anyone has any thoughts on:

1.) Compressor vs. Sorenson 6
2.) Some of the best Compressor recipes for H.264 QT
3.) Any additional notes on alternatives to Compressor, a mac-based software perhaps.
4.) I may think up some more questions later.

Tom Laughlin
Producer/Editor
Salt Lake City, UT
FCS3/Sony EX-3/Mac Intel

[Craig Seeman]

Telestream Episode’s Dicas H.264 codec is much better than Apple’s H.264 codec.

The problem with relying on presets is that they can’t possibly take into account unique aspects of a given source file. Presets, if they’re well made, could be good jumping off points and sometimes your source does happen to fit the mold.

Every recent H.264 coded comparison article I’ve read lists Apple’s H.264 in the bottom range. Apple doesn’t supply the hooks for what some would consider important functions. It’s CAVLC only. There’s no ability to use CABAC entropy. You can’t set it to High Profile. It’ll decide to be Main or Baseline. There’s no ability to set the number of B frames or Reference frames. The deinterlacer isn’t as flexible as the one in Episode. Compressor, even with an internal QMaster virtual cluster on an 8 core Mac can be slower than other compression apps. There are no ways that a preset can fix any of the above.