Render b4 Compressor Export

[Walter Biscardi]

[Alexander] “I was wondering whether I need to render a sequence labeled green or red before exporting it to Compressor to create an H264 video. Is”

Nope, no need to render anything.

Though don’t use the “Send To Compressor” option in FCP. This results in much slower render times in Compressor. Export a reference movie from FCP, then take that into Compressor and make your H.264.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

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[Paulo Jan]

But, doesn’t the manual say that “Export to Compressor” is the recommended option to get the most quality? The explanation I’ve always read was that, with a QT Reference, Compressor would be taking the render files, which would be already compressed into DV (or DVCPRO or whatever) and reencoding them again, while with “Export to Compressor”, Compressor would be receiving the raw, uncompressed render output from FCP, which would save a step.

The explanation makes sense to me, but I’ve always been curious about whether the difference in quality is actually worth it, or if it’s even visible. Would you say that the quality difference is negligible?

[Michael Sacci]

[PaulJBis] “Would you say that the quality difference is negligible? “

That is going to depend on your editing codec, if you are using HDV or DV I think “Sending to compressor” is a must. But it does tie up your system and it ties it up for a longer period of time. I also almost always use CBR vs. VBR and this give me back some of the time and I feel like I get a better encode most of the time.

I use “send to compressor” more then not, but my workflow and schedule allows for it. Everyone you should be testing these things out since it boils down to a judgement call.

Is the quality worth the extra time? Nobody can answer that but you. But the explanation above is correct.