FCP render Queue and QT7 H.264

[Enge]

Hello,
yes in answer to your question, it does it via an application called Compressor which is part of the Final Cut Studio. Some improvments have been made to the latest version, which starts shipping soon, the most important of which is you can now get .wmv and flash files out of it along with quicktime codecs and AIFF files, ready to stream, download or author to DVD.

[Antoine B]

Great stuff, thanks!

I checked it out and it’s a proper encoding utility, don’t understand why the new Premiere Pro CS3 does not do it. Shame on Adobe for this.

Wondering if Compressor comes into action straight from the unrendered timeline or if you have to render an uncompressed file first?

[Enge]

You can export to Compressor direct from the Final Cut timeline, yes. I’d always render everything down though, before you export, I don’t think Compressor would like it if you didn’t. The other option, if you’ve got the time is to export an uncompressed Quicktime to your desktop or another drive, then drag this file to Compressor and transcode your heart out, if things go badly, you’ve always got your source QT in a handy place, instead of opening up your project sequence…

[David Roth weiss]

[Antoine b] “Wondering if Compressor comes into action straight from the unrendered timeline or if you have to render an uncompressed file first?”

You can export from an unrendered timeline, but Compressor will render every frame, thus tying up your entire system. If you export a QT file first then Compressor can batch encode files while you continue to edit.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Post-production Supervisor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

[John Pale]

Most effiecient (time wise) is to export a reference movie, which takes seconds. Bring that into Compressor and encode away. You can still use FCP while that happens. If you invoke Compressor straight from the timeline, it takes over your system while it encodes.

If you absolutely hate using 2 programs, FCP itself also still has its own batch processor (Window/Export Queue), as a legacy from the pre-Compressor days. This does not run in the background and prevents you from editing.