FCS 3 and upgrades still being sold

[Chris Kenny]

[Craig Seeman] “With virtual cluster and batch processing?
Compressor isn’t just used for FCP export.”

Realistically Compressor is probably 95% used for FCP export, if not directly then conceptually, e.g. when you export a ProRes file from FCP via the ‘Export’ command and then transcode it to three different formats via Compressor.

It isn’t uncommon for Apple to optimize for the 95% use case and leave the remaining 5% as a “third-party opportunity”.

That said, it wouldn’t be very hard for Apple to add batch features to FCP.

If by ‘virtual clustering’ you mean the practice of running multiple instances of Compressor to get better CPU utilization on machines with lots of cores, I doubt any such thing will be required in FCP X, given its apparently widespread use of Grand Central Dispatch. With respect to actual physical clustering, that’s absolutely a small enough niche that Apple will have no problem ignoring it. Remote job submission is probably used a little more commonly, but not commonly enough for Apple to be overly concerned about it, I think.

Frankly, Qmaster (which provides all of these clustering and remote submission capabilities) has always been a little screwy, and I’d be surprised if Apple didn’t take this opportunity to get rid of it. The overhead of having to deal with the complexity of a system that enables these capabilities is detrimental to many more users than actually benefit significantly from these capabilities.

—
Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.

You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read Does FCP X make project files obsolete? on our blog.

[Charles Wren]

“Frankly, Qmaster (which provides all of these clustering and remote submission capabilities) has always been a little screwy…”

More like a nightmare.
80% of the time my compressor crashes at 67% of the file.