[Kirsten Dirksen]

Thanks Craig. Though you’ve also helped me realize how limited my tech knowledge is. I realized I”d just skimmed the part of the youtube specs page about CABAC… I won’t even ask.

Though I am curious as to a few more points. I used to export staright from final cut studio and I just used an automatic data rate and set the quality to best. Within Compressor you still have that option within video settings. My compression times used to be just 2 or 3 hours and now it’s an hour or so to lay off to prores (yes, that is also my workflow) and then another half day or day to compress within Compressor. Would I lose a lot of quality to simple go back to this automatic setting? And is this the same thing as the recommended variable bit rate suggestion?

I just changed my setting from best quality (multi-pass) to faster encode (single-pass) as I read that this didn’t make a big difference in quality, but does greatly help compression time.

I think my main issue is my computer is old.. a 2008 MacBook Pro (2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 8GB RAM). I need to upgrade, but I’m trying to wait it out for the MacBook Pro with the Hawell chip.

Thanks for the motivation to switch to progressive for filming. I think I was afraid of all the hundreds of hours of archive tape shot interlaced, but I know you can now mix the 2 in Final Cut when I want to use archived footage.