Export as reference to encode on networked Windows PC.

[David Roth weiss]

I don’t think there’s a soul among the Cow leaders who would suggest for a second that there aren’t any good MPEG2 encoders on the Windows platform that rival Compressor. Compressor does a very reasonable job, but there are a boatload of other encoders that are its equal and others that are superior. So, if you want to do your encoding on a Windows machine, I’m sure you have everyone’s blessings.

With regard to reference files vs, self contained files, now that hard drive costs have dropped so low, I personally no longer recommend reference files to anyone, for one simple reason — since they are not marked as reference files, it becomes very easy to forget that are reference files, and that they are dependent upon a timeline which cannot be changed in any way without corrupting the file in one way or another. There are untold examples right here on the Cow of users getting burned by discovering that a reference file they were using as their master suddenly went bonkers after a render or an auto-render. So, if you just avoid them that will never happen to you.

And BTW, if you do use a reference file over the network, it will greatly slow down the encoding and the network, as the encoder would be making constant calls between machines during the encoding process.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, and Indie Film & Documentary forums.

[Jeff Weisinger]

David,

Thank you for the response. I can see the pitfalls that could come with using reference, and I will greatly take that into account; possibly nixing that workflow in the future.

That being said, I think I understand what you are saying about encoding over a network, but I want to make sure. So, by using a reference file sent to Compressor, and then using Qmaster to encode with multiple Macs, it would actually be slower than using a self-contained file? That doesn’t make sense to me, but if that is what people have discovered, then I will take your word on it.

I did want to clarify my earlier question because I don’t think it was actually answered. Just for clarity if I exported as a reference file, and all my media and renders are on a scratch disk networked to the Windows PC, can I just drop the file into any encoder on the Windows side and it just works? If that is impossible then that is fine; frankly it sounds impossible, but who knows.

And one more question if you don’t mind. If I stay on the Mac with some projects, and just export as a Quicktime movie, is there any quality loss with self-contained over reference? I know I need to recompress if I change my render settings, but I haven’t found much clarity on that question. I would just as well like to export straight to compressor, but that ties up FCP, and always crashes when Qmaster is set up as a quickcluster. So in a sense, the fastest way is the export to quicktime movie option. (Oddly enough though the quickcluster works like a champ when I am just straight dropping something into Compressor.) I have read that going straight into compressor will get you the highest quality settings though? What would be your thought on that as well?

Hope I didn’t bombard you there, but I am a consummate learner, and I’ll be damned but there is just so much to soak in 🙂

Jeff