[Craig Seeman]

How is your client playing the file?
How are you playing the file?
Can your client give you a working file to analyze? Can the client tell you how such file was created?
Can you try the same specs with a different encoder (even a trial version)?

[Craig Seeman]

Compressor 4.2 certainly allows you to enable CABAC. YouTube spec says GOP should be one half the frame rate so your N should = 12, not 24. Set Keyframe rate to 12. You should also set Profile to High. Multipass encoding can help if you only did single pass.

Compressing a compressed file will always result in additional loss. It may be most apparent in harder to compressor areas such as gradients and areas that may have more noise as well as areas with high contrast.

[Craig Seeman]

This may have been from FCP 7 and it required a free Sony plugin.

Final Cut Pro timeline to XDCAM EX MP4

[Craig Seeman]

MVI is either Musical Video Interactive used to display lyrics on DVDs I believe, or a format for video and animation files from AutoCad. I believe certain Canon consumer cameras created .mvi files as well.

Rather than assuming they know what they need, you should as about the technology they’re using. This way you can ascertain whether they are limited to MVI.

[Craig Seeman]

[Mathieu Ghekiere] “His plan for the launch of FCPX sounds a lot more reasonable then how Apple did it”

One wonders how he felt when they didn’t listen to him. I can’t help that one possible reason he left Apple was that he really didn’t have the influence he felt he deserved for his creations.

[Mathieu Ghekiere] “FCP7 would have been on the market for another year, and if you bought a copy of X, you would have gotten 7 for free.”

I wonder if the opposite would have been better. Buy FCP7 and get FCPX for free. That would encourage experimentation and developing familiartiy.

How many peopling buying FCPX in the early days really wanted to learn FCP7? Or, would that forestall disappointment if they found FCPX didn’t meet their needs?

[Mathieu Ghekiere] “They are interested in video and they spend a lot of their spare time doing it. That’s the centre of the target.””

It’s possible that he might mean that FCPX would be a stepping stone to more expensive hardware purchases as some subset moves into the professional arena. Such purchases would not only be more expensive Mac hardware but third party tools, thus, encouraging such developers by giving them a large target base. These days I don’t think this approach is unique to Apple.

[Craig Seeman]

[Michael Kellam] “Do you happen to know – Is it possible to transfer existing projects from Premiere to FCPX? Given the tracks vs roles thing you mentioned, I assume it may not be advisable to transfer existing projects. Would there be something like EDL export and rebuild that could map an existing project to an FCP format?”

Intellegent Assistant 7 to X also works with Premiere Pro to X
https://assistedediting.intelligentassistance.com/7toX/

An application that exports Final Cut Pro XML (such as Final Cut Pro 7 or 6, Premiere Pro CC, etc.)

Also see
https://assistedediting.intelligentassistance.com/7toX/help/7toX%20for%20Final%20Cut%20Pro%20-%20Help.pdf

Open the project into Premiere Pro. Choose the File menu and from the Export submenu, select Final Cut Pro XML…, then name and save the XML file. (Premiere Pro exports XML Interchange Format version 4.)

[Craig Seeman]

Given QuickTime Pro is deprecated (and $30), you could get the current version of Compressor for not much more ($50). Apple finally worked on major speed and codec improvements with the current version. The H.264 exports can be almost as good as x264. It’s certainly competitive (finally) with Adobe’s MainConcept quality.

I suspect one of the big hurdles is that PPCS5.5 doesn’t take advantage of Apple’s newer OSs and underlying architecture.

Compressor, for example, now can use Intel QuickSync technology in current i7 CPUs.

FCPX does have a 30 day free trial. Unfortunately Compressor does not though.

[Craig Seeman]

For simple projects FCPX is very easy to learn.
If you have a complex Premiere workflow, FCPX can have a steep learning curve.
Learning how to organize without tracks can be a big hurdle for people since FCPX uses Roles to organize.

To put it another way, if you do ENG style work FCPX is intuitive. If you do lots of track based organizing it can be hard to get the hang of but once you do, it’s extremely fast.

Important though in your case is FCPX’s exporting and encoding. Both of which are very fast and probably miles faster than PPCS5.5, PPCC2015 would be much closer in speed.

Perhaps you can use the 30 day free CC trial and import your projects and export from there. Back up your projects first though because you may decide not to go the subscription route. The 30 day free trial could be enough to get you through the export/encode hurdle for free.

[Craig Seeman]

[Michael Kellam] “2014 MacBook Pro, 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3, NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB (Running Premiere Pro CS 5.5)”

I’m going take a stab that the problem is CS 5.5.
I have a late 2013 15″ MBPr with only IrisPro and my exports are many fold faster using FCPX. I suspect if you use the current CC Premiere Pro or FCPX you’ll get much faster exports.

[Craig Seeman]

[Chas Smith] “NLE’s like AVID, Premiere, FCP” if you mean FCPX all three NLEs are now supported.