FCP 6.0.5 and Compressor

[Steve Eisen]

Make a QuickTime Movie and drop that into Compressor. Now FCP won’t be tied up with Compressor does its work.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Cory Caplan]

Exporting a quicktime reference is always the best practice, as mentioned, it doesn’t tie up FCP, but also, you can use Compressor clusters– which is way, way, way faster on the encode, it does it in the background of whatever apps you’re using etc… The only bummer is when you have either a very quick encode (it would be nice to just send to compressor) or a large one that’s unrendered, as you must first render it, and then send to compressor– but you will more than make up the time in the speed of the encode, plus you’ll have a QT file to make encodes later, should you need it.

[Jack Pinard]

Thanks for these tips.

I have exported a reference quick time file and used compressor that way.

But your comments have me wondering about a couple of things;

my understanding was that you could in fact get a better encode by submitting the FCP sequence directly to Compressor because it would automatically put markers at transitions and other spots it recognized.

Is that not worth the effort?

Also may of my edits are an hour or more so when I create a QT reference movie – FCP is tied up for a fairly long period of time anyway and then I still need to wait for Compressor to to its job. Sometimes delivering these quickly makes it more efficient to export the timeline instead.

Any thoughts on what is the cleanest encode vs what is most efficient workflow?

thanks again

[Michael Sacci]

Well, exporting a QT movie and then using Compressor is the FASTEST way, not necessary the BEST.

When you export from the FCP timeline you get the best quality encode, especially in you are using a high compressed codec and have graphics and effects. And as stated above you don’t have to render the timeline and if you also use CBR method of encoding it can be as fast.

But the question was how do I get this option back. Compressor is probably one of the easiest app to get scrambled during upgrades. If the normal trash prefs do not fix things you need to do a re-install of compressor, and it needs to be done by the book. Below is a ling that gives you the procedure.

https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1888?viewlocale=en_US