How to render MPEG2 out of FCP?

[Walter Soyka]

[John Ranta] “This is such an easy thing to do out of Vegas (and I suspect other digital editing programs). Why is there such resistance to exporting an mpeg-2 video in the FCP world? I freely admit to not being a video geek with 20 years in the business, but it seems rather arbitrary and unuseful that I can’t export an mpeg-2 video out of FCP. Is this some sort of religious restriction?”

This is not a “religious” restriction at all — I think it’s more historical and philosophical.

When Final Cut Pro’s architecture was designed (at Macromedia in the late 90s), video production and delivery still happened on video tape. Digital delivery didn’t exist. Since then, Apple has added a suite of products around Final Cut Pro — some developed internally, and some acquired from other developers. The philosophy of Final Cut Suite has been Final Cut Pro for editorial at the center of the workflow, with specialized products (Compressor, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Color) adding capability around it.

I think that most other applications also use separate compression utilities. Of course FCP ships with Compressor, but Avid Media Composer ships with Sorenson Squeeze, and Adobe Premiere Pro ships with Adobe Media Encoder.

There has been speculation of an integrated uber-app in a future release of FCS, but no one knows for sure what the future will bring.

Personally, I like specialized tools for specific work. It’s kind of a UNIX-y approach: a series of smaller, tighter tools that can be combined in many different ways. This is especially useful when multiple deliverable formats are required for the same asset. Also, Compressor is not always the right tool for the job, so it’s nice to be able to use other compression apps like Episode Pro, Squeeze, Bitvice, and ProCoder. Each application has strengths and weaknesses, and each fits into a different workflow for me depending on my deliverable.

None of this makes it any more convenient to get MPEG-2 video from FCP, but hopefully it provides a little context for how we got here.

Finally, if Compressor isn’t working properly on your workstations, you might try Compressor Repair:

https://www.digitalrebellion.com/compressor_repair.htm

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Shawn Bockoven]

If you would like to send me an email, I can pass on what we are doing at our TV station. The process is quick, good-great quality and successful.

sbockoven@mcoe.org

One of three bald guys.

[Knox Harrington]

what if Compressor crapped out a while ago… anything to download that could compress a quicktime to mpeg2 from FCP? thank you