Compressor 4 feedback

[cgbier]

Sure, I know that. I wanted to know if Apple changed anything in the coding of reference files in the new Compressor. I'm not too keen on FCP X (yet), but would love to get Compressor.

Thank you.

 

[initialsBB]

I checked by importing a QT REF from FCP 7 into compressor and it worked fine.

My previous screenshot showed full CPU usage on an H264 export.

This one shows the CPU usage of an MPEG 2 for DVD export, not as stellar, but much better none the less.

 

[cgbier]

Thank you very much.

Yeah, MPEG2 isn't that much of a stress test for your system.

 

[fpnc]

The app might be 32-bit, but the rendering processes it spawns (i.e. the shared render engine) I believe are 64-bit, GCD and OpenCL aware.

That's not what I'm seeing on my quad-core Mac Pro running Compressor 4. The codecs are still 32-bit and the compression processes (compressord) are NOT 64-bit. I'm pretty certain that Compressor 4 is still based on the same QuickTime-7-based codecs that shipped with Compressor 3.

The only caveat is that I'm still running on Mac OS X 10.6.7 (i.e. I haven't updated to the recently released 10.6.8). However, I'd be very surprised if Apple shipped new 64-bit, QuickTime X codecs with 10.6.8.

 

[fpnc]

Compressor 4 no longer uses QMaster. Uses the same engine as FCP X and Motion 5. No more need to set up clusters, etc.

That's odd, I purchased Compressor 4 as a standalone (without FCP X) and it is still using QMaster. In fact, there is a QMaster menu right in Compressor 4 and the Compressor 4 manual actually documents setting up virtual clusters just so that you can use all of the cores on your system (otherwise, Apple's H.264 codec is limited to running on two cores and that's all you'll get when running a video compression job). As best as I can tell this is almost exactly how it worked under Compressor 3, so I don't see any changes in how multiple cores are being used in version 4.

Also, the new Share Monitor 4 explicitly shows the work being done on the virtual clusters, it divides the job into multiple threads each working on a limited portion of the video. In any case, I'm liking what I see with the new Share Monitor application, it's 64-bit, has the new FCP X UI, and it's very easy to use.

 

[fpnc]

...The only caveat is that I'm still running on Mac OS X 10.6.7 (i.e. I haven't updated to the recently released 10.6.8). However, I'd be very surprised if Apple shipped new 64-bit, QuickTime X codecs with 10.6.8.

I updated to Mac OS X 10.6.8 and Compressor 4 is still using 32-bit processes for the actual compression. In fact, below are the only changes I've noticed between Compressor v3 and v4:

1.) Compressor v4 now has QMaster setup built-in to the Compressor app itself (no more need for the separate QMaster control panel). There is, however, still a separate Qadministrator application (for managed clusters).

2.) Compressor now has presets and a post-processing action to support HTML live streaming.

3.) There is an application called Share Monitor that reports on and controls the background jobs. It's a 64-bit application and seems to be a completely new application (GUI matches FCP X).

4.) There are presets to create H.264/HD output for burning Blu-ray discs.

5.) The Compressor 4 application package/bundle now includes all of the frameworks and executables that are required for running Compressor. Thus the "app" size has grown from 110MB to 690MB.

Interestingly, there still seems to be very little support for adding metadata for the Apple TV (i.e. actors, director, MPAA rating, etc.). You can add QuickTime-based annotations just like in Compressor v3 but only some of that information will actually show up on the Apple TV. Also, just as in Compressor v3 you can add titles and image tags for each chapter (which do work on the Apple TV).