How to Compress Massive Video Files

[multicm]

I have 6 Clips each are 30 Gigs a piece on my mac, they are 3 hour long 1080p videos. I am looking for a way to compress them to 720p or 480p as quickly as possible. Any program suggestions? when I use Compressor it stops at 9% on all my videos.

On a side note, I am trying to speed these clips up to make a time lapse video. So the total video (18 Hours) ends up as 2-5 minutes, whats a good program for that?

[simsaladimbamba]

HandBrake can do the compressing. As for time lapses, I do not know, maybe the FCP X trial can help?

[multicm]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

HandBrake can do the compressing. As for time lapses, I do not know, maybe the FCP X trial can help?

I'll have to try Handbrake, as for Final Cut Pro, I have the whole Final Cut Pro studio on my mac and I tried it earlier, for some reason when I bring in any of the videos into Final Cut every 20th frame or so is a solid green frame, this happens even after i render the video. and that isn't in the actual file because they dont show up in quicktime. Any idea what causes that?

[simsaladimbamba]

Originally Posted by multicm

I'll have to try Handbrake, as for Final Cut Pro, I have the whole Final Cut Pro studio on my mac and I tried it earlier, for some reason when I bring in any of the videos into Final Cut every 20th frame or so is a solid green frame, this happens even after i render the video. and that isn't in the actual file because they dont show up in quicktime. Any idea what causes that?

In order to find out, what may be wrong with your video, you can use the following three applications to analyse a sample video file.

• VideoSpec (free)
• MediaInfo (free)
• Media Inspector (2.99 USD € in the Mac App Store (MAS))

When done, you can use the "Report" (VideoSpec) and "Export" (Media Inspector) button to export a report,
attachable to your next post via the button.
In MediaInfo you have to go to the Menu Bar, select View > Text and copy the text via CMD+A > CMD+C and paste it via CMD+V into your next post.

[kohlson]

>>>for some reason when I bring in any of the videos into Final Cut every 20th frame or so is a solid green frame, this happens even after i render the video.

I suspect this is added by FC to keep the sound and audio in sync. FC is quite powerful, and works with audio and video from multiple sources using different standards and technologies. I'm not proficient in FC but I remember from a sound class is that apps such as this have this ability. I believe it can be addressed in project properties. Perhaps better to follow up in an FC forum.

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I've noticed the green frames pop up in 60fps video (about once per second), imported directly into FCPX. The solution for me has been to first import it into Clipwrap and convert it to Prores (still 60fps), then import that output into FCPX for editing. No more green frames when done this way.

By the way, once I have it edited, I export it as Prores and run that file through Handbrake for compression. I prefer Handbrake to Compressor in my workflow- seems faster and yields what seems to be consistently smaller files.

If OP wanted to follow my model (and had no editing to do), he would import his raw videos into Clipwrap, convert them to Prores, then feed those Prores files directly into Handbrake for compression.

[Arran]

Originally Posted by simsaladimbamba

HandBrake can do the compressing. As for time lapses, I do not know, maybe the FCP X trial can help?

Yeah, I'll second that. Over the holidays, I scrunched a dozen 20gb home video files (originally VHS tapes) down to 2gb apiece. I didn't know handbrake could do that: I just tried it as an experiment and, to my surprise, it worked! Good results.