[Macworld]

Post your comments for Review: Compressor 4 here

[Photonerd]

DO you need Compressor 4 to do things like set render quality settings or codec settings for any common format (H.264, MPEG 2 etc) or only for the more specialized use codecs and settings? IOW does FCP X only let you render with "presets", or do you have some control over the above and other settings like bitrates, etc?

[karotto1]

pro: interface unchanged. con: interface unchanged (doesnt look like fcp x). Is this a prank review?

[technologist]

karotto1, on 11 July 2011 - 09:23 PM, said:

pro: interface unchanged. con: interface unchanged (doesnt look like fcp x). Is this a prank review?

Do you really not understand how the same thing can be viewed as a positive and a negative by different people?

Carrying over the same interface is a good thing for experienced users of the previous version because they will be able to use their knowledge of the previous version without having to re-learn anything. However, for new users, it is a bad thing because they have to learn two different interfaces, one in FCP and another in Compressor.

This post has been edited by technologist: 12 July 2011 - 06:56 AM

[garyadcock]

karotto1, on 11 July 2011 - 09:23 PM, said:

pro: interface unchanged. con: interface unchanged (doesnt look like fcp x). Is this a prank review?

No, it is not a joke. it is a lighthearted stab at the issue.

Many people are distraught over what some call the "drastic" interface changes in FCPX and Motion5, however as the only Apple app in released that did not have an interface change, it can be argued both ways, some people do not want change, other do, hence the reason for having the comment under both sections.

gary

[CyrusHogg5b5f]

Ok here's the deal. Compressing an uncompressed 70gig 1080p quicktime down to H264 can be intensive. Using quicktime X, you can't do anything. So, after installing quicktime pro 7, it takes around 30-40 minutes. Using 1.5 cores of 8 on a brand new MBP and a vertex3 solid state drive.

I tried to compress the same file with FCP X using the "share" export command saving as H264. It doesn't offer any settings for compression amount and the file only compressed down to 1gb (Divx is 150mb, but hoping to get something comparable in quality at 250mb). FCP X, although unusable, did compress using 7 cores in about 6 minutes. That part is cool.

So i installed compressor 4 and tried again. Side note, Compressor has one of the worst user interfaces ever seen. Anyway, compressor didn't use more than 1.5 cores either.

In the end, i just went back to quicktime 7 and exported it patiently.

[wbrock0011]

CyrusHogg5b5f, on 15 July 2011 - 10:11 PM, said:

Ok here's the deal. Compressing an uncompressed 70gig 1080p quicktime down to H264 can be intensive. Using quicktime X, you can't do anything. So, after installing quicktime pro 7, it takes around 30-40 minutes. Using 1.5 cores of 8 on a brand new MBP and a vertex3 solid state drive.

I tried to compress the same file with FCP X using the "share" export command saving as H264. It doesn't offer any settings for compression amount and the file only compressed down to 1gb (Divx is 150mb, but hoping to get something comparable in quality at 250mb). FCP X, although unusable, did compress using 7 cores in about 6 minutes. That part is cool.

So i installed compressor 4 and tried again. Side note, Compressor has one of the worst user interfaces ever seen. Anyway, compressor didn't use more than 1.5 cores either.

In the end, i just went back to quicktime 7 and exported it patiently.

So you used all the same settings in Compressor 4 (as well as you could tell) and it still only used 1.5 cores to compress the h.264? I assume you exported as ProRes 422? Any specific information would be useful? Does Compressor 4 allow you to make custom settings that are accessible through fcp x, that is my impression from this review? So in theory, those settings used through fcp x might then take advantage of all cores? I currently use Compressor 3 and when encoding h.264 often get 6-7 cores in use, doing it by exporting a reference file from FCP 7.x, then pulling into Compressor 3. Thanks!

[FCPro]

Quote

Ok here's the deal. Compressing an uncompressed 70gig 1080p quicktime down to H264 can be intensive. Using quicktime X, you can't do anything. So, after installing quicktime pro 7, it takes around 30-40 minutes. Using 1.5 cores of 8 on a brand new MBP and a vertex3 solid state drive. I tried to compress the same file with FCP X using the "share" export command saving as H264. It doesn't offer any settings for compression amount and the file only compressed down to 1gb (Divx is 150mb, but hoping to get something comparable in quality at 250mb). FCP X, although unusable, did compress using 7 cores in about 6 minutes. That part is cool. So i installed compressor 4 and tried again. Side note, Compressor has one of the worst user interfaces ever seen. Anyway, compressor didn't use more than 1.5 cores either. In the end, i just went back to quicktime 7 and exported it patiently.

CyrusHogg5b5f you might want to check your cluster settings. Compressor uses many more CPU cores when it submits to a quickcluster instead of "This Computer" Check out this web page
http://help.apple.co...=4%26tasks=true