[Oliver Busch]

Nothing to thank for 🙂

Sorenson Squeeze will do just fine.
This would have been the other pro compression tool I would recommend.
Seems they recently added some serious speed improvements to the latest update.

Btw. if you’re edititing interlaced footage, remember to deinterlace your movie. Most tools, incl. Squeeze, Episode, VisualHub etc. have deinterlacing filters/functions built in. Otherwise you would see interlace artifacts in the exported video, especially in scenes with fast movement.

My 2 (Euro)cents 🙂
Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

Actually I would not recommend MPEG Streamclip.
While it’s an awesome tool for conversion between formats I would use a tool like Techspansion’s “Visual Hub” (which is built around the same codecs as FFMPEGX but actually has a usable interface) for compressing into web video formats.
It costs $23.32 and is available at https://www.techspansion.com/visualhub/.

If you want to get the last bit of quality out of your compressed movie I would recommend a professional encoding application like Episode from Flip4Mac. https://www.flip4mac.com/episode.htm
While it costs from $399 up it handles almost any codec format on earth.

The problem with exporting via FCP’s QuickTime export, exporting via Compressor or exporting via MPEGStramclip is that all of these solutions use QuickTime’s own MPEG-4 or H.264 codecs. Which, compared to the other alternatives, are slower (to compress), lower quality and don’t offer the same amount of parameter customization.

VisualHub reads QuickTime reference movies. So you only need to export your FCP timeline into this format without the need to render a your sequence into a self-contained QuickTime movie.

A formula for calculating the data rate:

datarate (in kbits/sec) = (target) width * (target) height * (target) framerate * q-factor / 1024

A good starting point for the q-factor would be:
MPEG-4: 0.23
H.264: 0.15

Please also keep in mind that most web delivery codecs (incl. MPEG-4) compress best when the width and height are dividable by 16, e.g. 320×240 etc.

Best regards, Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

It’s up to 16 angles 🙂
Doesn’t matter, anyway. Even 4 angles playing at the same time are getting hard to handle. At least for me.

Ken Stone has a nice review of FCP 5’s new features by Steve Martin, including Multicam.
https://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/fcp_5_new_martin.html

And I forgot in my earlier post: FCP can be set up to switch Multicam angles via keyboard. Apple even provides a multicam keyboard setup.

Best regards, Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

Positive.

See the movie about FCP multicam feature here:
https://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/quicktours/?quicktours/editing/qt_fcp_3_multicam
(the web page layout is garbled as this is a quasi-direct link to the movie file)

Hope this helps.

Best regards
Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

ProCoder is still the champ on Windows, imho.
As you already own it, I see no need for other tools.
The easiest way would be networking the two machines and setting up a watch folder in ProCoder.

On the Mac side, Episode (formerly Compression Master, recently acquired by Telestream/Flip4Mac, makers of the WMV tools you mentioned) is by far the best compression tool money can buy. Again, imho 🙂
https://www.flip4mac.com/episode.htm
Episode is almost exactly like ProCoder in terms of batch capabilities, multi-format support (MPEG 1/2/4/AVC, WMV, Real, QT, FLV, 3GP etc.)
If you only need to export to WMV, the Flip4Mac WMV Tools are perfect. They can even be integrated into a Compressor setup.
If you want or need to produce the highest quality possible there’s no way around 2-pass encoding, which is only available in WMV Studio Pro HD.

Best regards, Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

Most deinterlacing plugs I know are for Adobe AfterEffects and/or FinalCut Pro.
The only AVX plugins I know of that offer deinterlacing:
3Prong’s SpeedRamp – https://www.3prong.com
and BorisFX ContinuumComplete AVX – https://borisfx.com/products/CONTINUUM_COMPLETE/avx/
I have no experience about the quality of the respective plugins, but both vendors offer demo versions.

If you work Mac Avid you could also take a look at Noise Industries ‘Factory Tools’ which allows you to create your own realtime plugins.
https://www.noiseindustries.com/factorytools/

Hope this helps,
Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

you’re right.
weird.

thanks for the info.

Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

Try watching this video podcast.
https://www.digital-heaven.co.uk/podcast/
The only currently available episode (podcast start was only a few days ago) shows what you need.
And images say more than words 🙂

Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

Try the functions in the Software Update apps ‘Update’ menu:
Download Only
Install (default when clicking the button in the Software Update window)
Install and keep package

1st and 3rd option put the packages to /Library/Packages/

Oliver

[Oliver Busch]

There was a free AAF import/export plugin for FCP 4.x from Automatic Duck that apparently is no longer officially available.
You can still download it here:
https://www.appleclub.com.hk/finalcutpro/extensible.html
(Search for ‘Download free plugin’ on the page, the actual d/l link is too long to post here.)
As far as I know, it support the AAF 1.0 spec only.
I have no idea if it (still) works (esp. with FCP 5.x).
I actually was never able to get anything into FCP with it.
But it’s still worth a try.

The commercial successor(s) to this product is/are available from AutomaticDuck which also supports the newer AAF 1.1 Edit Protocol spec.
https://www.automaticduck.com

My 2 (Euro)cents
Best regards, Oliver