Oh sweet I had my inspector plane closed, guess that would help customize settings.

i use compressor 25% of the time and the rest i use squeeze (v10). squeeze 10 would be a hell of an update for you. my favorite new features in v10 are 4k presets, HEVC/x265, VP9 and Multi-Rate bundle encoding.

using squeeze won't make your workflow smoother though as it doesn't integrate with fcpx. you'll have to export, i mean share first.

if workflow is what you're after stick with compressor of course.

I think the baseline version would be a nice tool to have since some stuff I work on with fellow DJs and just need to transcode to a good MP4 for adding to my library.

Anyone here interested in my Compressor droplet? Might give you something to look at if you're wondering about exporting from FCPX.

I'm sure Nyce is way ahead on that game, but it can be daunting for someone who is new to the program :D

I hadn't used Compressor for about five years (been using Episode encoder since 2010), but I got interested in Compressor again when hearing that the recent 4.2 update introduced changes in h.264 encoding, including making use of a computer's GPU.

On a "retina" iMac, encoding speeds are incredibly fast. A 640x480 2-pass Main profile CABAC encode (with 320k AAC audio) of a 4 minute video would take 3-4 minutes in Episode, but takes 20-30 seconds in Compressor 4.2.

I've encoded a couple dozen videos with Compressor over the last couple weeks, and I'm so far seeing no issues with video quality.

You do have to either make your own settings or use someone's appropriate "droplet", none of the included Compressor settings is appropriate for our use.

I think the hardest part is getting around labels that just say MPEG-4 vs H.264 and I think that throws a lot of people off. After having a preset in my old version of Squeeze for so long, I kinda forgot what some of the settings were outside of video and audio bitrate.

Anyone feel like sharing a tried and true setting for a noob when it comes to video edititng?

We should have a nice dedicated thread to codec - audio + video bitrate - keyframe setting and more.

My "MP4 SD" settings in Compressor look like this (I'll only list the variables that can actually be modified):

General: "Allow Job Segmenting" [checked]

Video:

Frame size: Automatic
Frame rate: Automatic
H.264 profile: Main
Entropy Mode: CABAC
Key Frame Interval: 20
Data Rate: 3,000 (for 640x480 or 640x360 videos)
Multi-pass [checked]
Allow Frame reordering [checked]

Audio:

Channel layout: Stereo (L R)
Sample Rate 44.1 kHz
Data Rate: 320 kbps

For 480p videos that are widescreen (854x480) I use a data rate of 3,600, and for 720p videos I up that to 5,000.

I'll compare mine and do an imgur post with some screen shots.

Are you using radically different settings? There's not that much to adjust...

lol. compressor 4.2 just came out so i upped its usage to 30%.

Yep my SD bitrate is just a tad lower than yours DJMark, here's the visual for anyone who isn't familiar with what Compressor looks like.

imgur.com

One thing I will say thought, Squeeze will chew through some stuff I can't just dump through Compressor (needing to dump to ProRes or redo stuff that had old AC3 audio tracks). But Squeeze also tends to ignore my settings to not touch my AR on a source at times and I get a 4:3 video spit out in 3:2 no matter that the F I do..

I also notice that, despite Apple's claim that Compressor can IVTC a source with cadence breaks, that the results are (still) horrible.

Still going to be using MPEG Streamclip and Episode for preparing source material for editing/remastering, but Compressor 4.2 (with its dramatically faster h.264 encoding speed) is looking good for doing encodes for DJ use.

Are there any updated tutorials on prepping videos for editing on the Mac side of things? I currently work with my MBP and bootcamp but wouldn't mind doing away with the Windows side of things altogether if it's possible to get good results on OSX.

DJMark, you mentioned Episode and MPEG Streamclip. Any tips on using them?

One tip about MPEG Streamclip (which unfortunately has not been updated for almost 3 years, though the last beta version seems to work fine): to use it with Mavericks and Yosemite, get info on the app file, then check the box "Open in Low Resolution". If you don't do that, the app's main window display is all screwed up.

If you've already got a good prepping workflow in Windows, I don't know that it's worth ditching Windows just for the sake of MPEG Streamclip and Episode. First of all Episode is a $500 purchase, and while it generally does usable IVTC (unlike Compressor and Handbrake), it's not perfect. On some videos that were shot on film and edited in interlaced video, and have a lot of rapid editing, the IVTC process just falls apart and I wind up saying "screw it" and deinterlacing at 29.97 in MPEG Streamclip (which has an excellent deinterlace filter).

I've also tried using Sorenson Squeeze for IVTC and though the function is there, I can't find any way for Squeeze to give a 23.976fps result. That framerate doesn't seem to be available in Squeeze closest is 24. And though the video results seem okay, the audio loses sync.

Don't know if this is much help or not...

This is somewhat realated to this thread... I just got compressor and when I put my source file in compressor there is no audio. I check it with QT in case it's an Apple problem and the video plays with audio. Any Thoughts?

I forgot to mention what I'm trying to do... convert MPEG2 to MPEG4.

You may need to use MPEGStreamclip to export it at ProRes MOV file first, especially if the audio was AC3 or some other surround format, Compressor doesn't always play nice with that.

Yes. One big advantage MPEG Streamclip has in that scenario is the ability to choose from different audio streams (if there's more than one). Some DVD's have an AC3 2.0 along with an AC3 5.1 stream. Or possibly an LPCM stream along with one or more AC3 streams.

If you intend to actually use the audio from the MPEG2 file, you'd want to use the LPCM stream as first preference if it's there. If not, an AC3 2.0 stream will probably sound better than a 5.1 stream (either with just using the two front channels, or downmixed), depending on exactly what was done to create the 5.1 stream.

I learned years ago there's no "easy and automated" way to get best possible results with this stuff...it's very situation-dependent with different source material.

If you're dealing with commercial DVD's, it's as likely as not you'd want to replace audio with a better source, unless you have a completely IDGAF approach to quality.