[Michael Mcintyre]

Another vote for Telestream Switch. I had similar needs for keeping audio tracks intact and it is great. While you won’t be able to set up a batch of multiple files, it’ll definitely pass-through the audio and trimming is also an option.

[Michael Mcintyre]

Storage is cheap. Many affordable options out there.
I realize Final Cut is technically ‘end-of-life’ but I have clients still using it.
They’re riding it into the ground and so will I.
No one’s ever asked me for FCPX compliance or projects.

[Michael Mcintyre]

I know you hate squishing your film but you can get great results <2 gigs for 53 minutes.
Looking at a very solid encode of a recent show:
Duration: 0:46:25
Data Size: 364.74 MB
Bit Rate: 1.10 Mbps
624 × 348, 23.976 fps, 971 kbps
MPEG Layer-3 Audio stereo, 44.1 kHz, 128 kbps

Bump up the size / bit rate as you wish.
I always isolate a minute to test rather than encoding the whole thing.

[Michael Mcintyre]

Sorry to hear that, Jacob. Not sure how best to advise:
• Does Batch Monitor still show an encode processing?
• Does Activity Monitor show any ‘suspicious activity’? [i.e. What’s hogging all that CPU?}

– Michael

[Michael Mcintyre]

Hey Jacob,

Your Compressor job could be hung up and still trying to complete. Open Batch Monitor and see if it’s still running. Within Compressor, you can go to Compressor -> Reset Background Processing -> “Reset and cancel jobs”. For failed jobs that I’ve sent to a cluster, I’ve even had to go into QMaster and stop sharing that cluster.

Doesn’t matter if you reboot or repair permission, the job will start again unless you can kill it somehow.

Hope this help – Michael

[Michael Mcintyre]

I hear ya… I just haven’t been asked by anyone to deliver from Premiere yet.

I do know several smaller shops that seem perfectly happy with PPro.

And – as if on cue, FCP has crashed twice since my snarky comment.

Crash-free for weeks and BLAMMO!

[Michael Mcintyre]

“Upgrading” to FCPX?!?!?!?!?
Uh – that’s obviously debatable. And a whole other thread in and of itself.
Sorry Craig – couldn’t resist.

Also noted the comment “if you’re doing paid work”.
All I’ve been doing is paid work for the last 20 years.
No network, major broadcast facility or motion picture studio has asked me to deliver from either FCPX or Premiere.
I’ll happily oblige whatever request they have.
In the meantime, it’s FCP7 and Avid. EOL status be damned.

Mark – try MPEG Streamclip from squared5.com. It’ll unwrap mp4 into ProRes faster than you’d think.

[Michael Mcintyre]

Hey Dan,

Sadly there’s no ‘catch-all’ answer to deliverables. Each network has their own specs and QC. Regarding XDCam, we’ve only used this for acquisition. For broadcast, I’ve been asked to deliver ProRes, DVCPROHD and MPEG2 transport streams.

Many network codec ‘white papers’ and spec sheets are available online. Sorry I can’t be of more help but there’s no easy answer to what any given network will want.

Best of luck w/ the show!

– Michael McIntyre

[Michael Mcintyre]

Yeah – not much luck here either w/ bizarre frame-size and AME.

I’ve jumped through hoops with large presentations before and often it’s best to let their playback do the heavy lifting rather than encoding for the size of the venue. Maybe it’s playing back through Spyder or Daktronics?

[Michael Mcintyre]

Each week, I create MPEG2 transport streams using Adobe Media Encoder. These are HD broadcast programs for a major satellite network. While largely overlooked, AME yields excellent results and is much faster than Telestream Episode, Sorensen Squeeze and any number of other compression programs we tested.

I’d need to see the full specs requested to know whether it’s up to the task. List all the numbers necessary rather than just “MPEG2-TS or H264 in a MPEG-TS container”.