FCP compression nightmare

[Steve Eisen]

Some folks just don’t get it. I’m here to help if you want to listen.

Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group

[Scott Huster]

Compressor using MPEG-4 with a key frame interval of 15 and a bit rate at Medium VBR got me down to 71MB with acceptable results, around 2hrs to compress. Thanks to all.

[Rafael Amador]

[Scott Huster] “Compressor using MPEG-4 with a key frame interval of 1”
Never set the key-frames by your self. You have no arguments to set a value or another. Let the application set the K-frames: this is why the “double pass” is for.
BTW, people that take the piss of Handbrake, just to say that is much, much better than the rest of the usual options available (QT, Compressor, MPGStreamclip). Handbrake is the BMW.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[Gabriel Regalbuto]

Handbrakes .mp4 options are much better than Compressors. I’ve always been frustrated that Compressor was so limited with .mp4 versus an h.264 QT. Am I missing something?

I stumbled onto Handbrake recently. Uses all 8 cores, quick, good quality, and lets you set compression based on target file size or data rate. No prores though…

I know BMW, I’ve driven many, Compressor, you are no BMW.

[Rafael Amador]

I agree with you Gabriel.
The only shortcoming of Handbrake is that doesn’t resizes, neither accepts Prores.
Applications that allows similar process control cost few hundred of dollars.
I master in Prores; when I need to make an H264, I transcode to 10b Unc to bring the clip to Handbrake.
rafael

http://www.nagavideo.com

[John Pale]

You are right, Rafael. Handbrake is actually a very good tool for some types of work (and I do use it, too). It has some very interesting features for experienced users. I shouldn’t have put it down.

I think Compressor is more versatile and better suited for the kind of work the original poster was doing, however.

[Andrew Wenner]

For good quick results compressing and converting m2ts and many other formats, try using iskysoft imedia convertor, it works great.

[Mike Schrengohst]

Scott:

Here is a test I did:
Direct from timeline – convert to H.264.mov then convert to .mp4 in QuickTime
7:40 minutes – took 10 min to encode, 145 megs using an iMac.

https://www.izonemedia.net/960x540_test.mp4

For comparision here is the YouTube version:
https://www.youtube.com/mhsrv1#p/a/f/0/9bZ4BEBaCwM
(Just click 720p)
I upload a 720p .mp4 for YouTube.

Look at my video page – most are .mp4 using FlowPlayer.

https://www.izonemedia.net/video.html

I don’t post .mov because many people on PC’s are still
QuickTime phobic and don’t even have QuickTime installed.

[Mike Schrengohst]

Don’t know why the YouTube Link was missing?

YouTube Link:

just add this after YouTube dot com

/mhsrv1#p/a/f/0/9bZ4BEBaCwM

[Chris Lawes]

Just for the record, after extensive experimenting and testing we found that final H264 files created by Handbrake were WAY better than compressor, and this is even after really tweaking the keyframe settings according to Ken Stone’s tutorials. Also, handbrake converted them in about 1/8 of the time.

For the particular purpose of converting a master to a H264 web video I think Handbrake is way better.

Only problem is it doesn’t take ProRes files, what format do you people working with ProRes timelines usually export to for compression with Handbrake? Have you found that it matters as far as quality/export time goes?
-Chris