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Compressor 4 with an FCP X project containing Optical Flow

L

laserbeam273

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 7, 2010
424
0
Australia
I'm trying to export a project I've made using Compressor 4, but it doesn't seem to include the optical flow sections in my project. The retiming has worked fine, but instead of the smooth optical flow the frame rate is at half-speed (as I've slowed it down to roughly half speed).

How can I get compressor to export with the optical flow sections working correctly?
 
It sounds like you're encountering a problem getting the compressed file to look exactly like what you made in your project (FCP X). The first thing I would do is go to the project in Final Cut and export (command + E) in ProRes (deafult codec when "Exporting"), then open Compressor 4 and use the exported file as the source (instead of using "Send to Compressor"). Make sure that the exported file's optical flow looks alright, and compress that file using the settings you want to give you the final compressed video file.
 
Zwhaler said:
It sounds like you're encountering a problem getting the compressed file to look exactly like what you made in your project (FCP X). The first thing I would do is go to the project in Final Cut and export (command + E) in ProRes (deafult codec when "Exporting"), then open Compressor 4 and use the exported file as the source (instead of using "Send to Compressor"). Make sure that the exported file's optical flow looks alright, and compress that file using the settings you want to give you the final compressed video file.
Click to expand...

Awesome, thanks for the reply. Yeah that looks like that'll work, it did the trick with a test clip. I'll run the real thing now.

In terms of preserving quality, is it better to export from FCP X as the standard ProRes 422, which is what I've been using, or would ProRes 422 HQ or even uncompressed 10-bit be better?

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And I have to say, compressor is making my iMac look terribly slow! Plenty lag when selecting settings etc, up to 10 seconds. Do people with excellent mac pros still experience this, or is it a compressor issue?
 
I always use the top option "Current Settings", that produces the highest quality export I need. When compressing, I use the following settings to get the highest quality compressed video and audio: up to 1920x1080, video h.264 automatic Best quality multi-pass, and AAC variable bitrate (VBR) Best quality.
 
Zwhaler said:
I always use the top option "Current Settings", that produces the highest quality export I need. When compressing, I use the following settings to get the highest quality compressed video and audio: up to 1920x1080, video h.264 automatic Best quality multi-pass, and AAC variable bitrate (VBR) Best quality.
Click to expand...

My settings seem a bit different to yours..

File format: MPEG-4?
Video compression: H.264 baseline profile?

Destination is YouTube, so it'll be compressed hard anyway, but still want to preserve what quality I can.

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I compressed the full project, it worked fine - thanks for the help! Quality looks good, now to see how it'll look on youtube.
 
laserbeam273 said:
My settings seem a bit different to yours..

File format: MPEG-4?
Video compression: H.264 baseline profile?

Destination is YouTube, so it'll be compressed hard anyway, but still want to preserve what quality I can.
Click to expand...

I use File Format: Quicktime Movie. Then you'll see the options from my above post. I get the best results using this file format for YouTube videos.
 
Zwhaler said:
I use File Format: Quicktime Movie. Then you'll see the options from my above post. I get the best results using this file format for YouTube videos.
Click to expand...

I gave that a go, it's a much higher bitrate! My video is 1:30 long, with MPEG it's 330 MB and with Quicktime it's 2 GB. Maybe I need to turn down the quality a bit because this upload time is going to be huge at 100 KB/sec.
 
Yes if it's only 1:30 and it's 2GB, the visual difference between "High" and "Best" for Quicktime .mov automatic is barely noticeable, if at all. If you ever need super high quality compressed video this is the way to go.
 
Zwhaler said:
Yes if it's only 1:30 and it's 2GB, the visual difference between "High" and "Best" for Quicktime .mov automatic is barely noticeable, if at all. If you ever need super high quality compressed video this is the way to go.
Click to expand...

I'll just go for best quality. Considering how fussy I was about using archives of original media to generate ProRes 422 clips.. may as well go all the way and upload in best quality. Don't think I'll regret it.

On YouTube they have a guide on uploading MOVs to optimise quality - see here:
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1297408
Yours was the same for most part, one of the differences though was that they want a constant not variable bitrate for the sound. Not sure it's that significant though.
 
That sounds good, I've been using Best quality VBR AAC in over 100 YouTube videos and never have encountered any issues. Since most of my uploaded content is live music, I always want the best quality possible and theoretically VBR should deliver higher quality sound than constant, though the difference is minute.
 
Zwhaler said:
That sounds good, I've been using Best quality VBR AAC in over 100 YouTube videos and never have encountered any issues. Since most of my uploaded content is live music, I always want the best quality possible and theoretically VBR should deliver higher quality sound than constant, though the difference is minute.
Click to expand...

Do you reckon they compress audio to 128 Kb/sec? That's what they seemed to imply with their setup. I went to the effort of contacting the artist and getting a lossless version, but there really might not be much point if they're compressing it that hard.
 
No, that screen cap was of the default setting when you choose "Constant Bitrate" and Average Bit Rate, for that matter. If you would prefer constant or average bit rate, make sure you change it to 320Kbps. That's as good as it's gonna get for compressing audio (other than Best Quality VBR). If you are using the Lossless as the source audio then using any of the above settings will result in high quality compressed audio, 99% indistinguishable from the Lossless version.
 
Zwhaler said:
No, that screen cap was of the default setting when you choose "Constant Bitrate" and Average Bit Rate, for that matter. If you would prefer constant or average bit rate, make sure you change it to 320Kbps. That's as good as it's gonna get for compressing audio (other than Best Quality VBR). If you are using the Lossless as the source audio then using any of the above settings will result in high quality compressed audio, 99% indistinguishable from the Lossless version.
Click to expand...

Alright, cool stuff. I'll use Best Quality VBR then next time! Thanks for the tip.

EDIT: One other thing, you know how a lot of the videos have the link to the musician's iTunes page? How do you get that? Does it come randomly? Because I'm friends with the artists and want him to get credit.
 
If you're talking about Content ID Match, then yes those come automatically if you use the published track in the video.
 
Yes it will. I've actually had Google recognize and tag live music where the artist sounded close enough to the original (and a couple where the original artist really was performing his song!)
 
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