Compressor Insanely Slow 1080p

[marshzd]

Hey guys, I'm running into an interesting problem (maybe it's not). I work for a corporation doing compression and we generally use large farms for a lot of what we do, since they are huge files and we often do 50+ languages of videos.

We got some files that were "eyes only" and weren't allowed to be put onto our server farms, so we needed to process them offline. I created a setup for Compressor that duplicates our farms processes and ran it on my local computer while the ethernet plug was unhooked.

So, creating a 360p MP4 at 1000kbps took 10 minutes. Creating a 720p MP4 at 1800kbps took 16 minutes. Creating the 1080p MP4 8000kbps took over three hours...

Is that right? That three hours is a killer when I'm running so many files. I pulled a couple machines to get the project done on time.

If you need more details let me know. The source files were DNxHD MOV and Prores 422 MOV, took about as long for either of them.

 

[Small White Car]

In general, I've found Apple's Compressor to be really damn slow. But I put up with it because the results are generally fantastic.

The best thing you can do is to make sure that 'Multi-pass' is un-checked. Will that alter the quality? Technically, but I think you'll be perfectly happy without it.

In all seriousness, look at Handbrake too. I use Compressor when I need something perfect (or if I need my Final Cut chapters preserved) but if I need something fast I find that Handbrake does a job that's almost as good in a fraction of the time. I switch between the two programs a fair amount, perhaps Handbrake will be good enough for your uses.

 

[ColdCase]

I also found Handbrake to be much faster and its HD default setting quite good. I think thats because it pegs all eight cores, while compressor just uses most of four. Handbrake will also compress into smaller files, but then I don't deal with pristine quality stuff most of the time. For those times I do I tend to use compressor. For DVDs I use compressor because I have a set of settings I like.

 

[marshzd]

I've used Handbrake before for quick and dirty for personal use (AppleTV and such), but I've never really dove into it as a professional tool. Can you adjust bitrates/audio channels/h.264 profiles and all that jazz?

 

[Small White Car]

I've used Handbrake before for quick and dirty for personal use (AppleTV and such), but I've never really dove into it as a professional tool. Can you adjust bitrates/audio channels/h.264 profiles and all that jazz?

Not sure about the h.264 profiles, but yes to the rest of it.

Once you get something you like you can save it as a preset too. It also has a queue where you can line up a bunch of jobs before starting.

 

[mooblie]

I would investigate Elgato's Turbo.264 HD hardware accelerator:

http://www.macworld.com/article/1141610/turbo264hd.html

Possibly no longer available new, but I have two of them from eBay, and now use them for all my H.264/MP4 encoding.

 

[mojito]

I've used Handbrake before for quick and dirty for personal use (AppleTV and such), but I've never really dove into it as a professional tool. Can you adjust bitrates/audio channels/h.264 profiles and all that jazz?

Not to be a broken record in this subforum, but check out MPEG Streamclip as well. Very simply designed, customizable with video codecs, and an easy slider bar to adjust your quality among other perks. I use it constantly. Free, small, quick, etc.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

Not to be a broken record in this subforum, but check out MPEG Streamclip as well. Very simply designed, customizable with video codecs, and an easy slider bar to adjust your quality among other perks. I use it constantly. Free, small, quick, etc.

I use it too for some transcoding jobs to editing codecs, but it is so damn slow, as it only uses one core or two threads on my i7.

 

[Canubis]

You can speed up Compressor and make it use all core processing power by configuring Apple Qmaster and using QuickClusters. It may seem a bit complicate at first but is actually pretty straight forward and really unleashes your Macs full power when working with Compressor. (It's the same technology that also let's you spare rendering jobs over several Macs in a network.)

Do a Google search for instructions or get started with this link:
http://www.digitalrebellion.com/blog/posts/using_compressor_with_multiple_cores.html

 

[JackSpicer0]

I've used both Compressor and Handbrake for videos that are already compressed. Yes, Compressor is slow, especially when converting from 1080p to 360p for my iPhone. I set the video quality at "Best" and the videos do look great, although I prefer Handbrake for quicker conversions.