Compressor 4 needed?

I am reading about Compressor 4 now. I did not purchase it when I purchased Final Cut X. It appears that it does the same thing (Transcoding) that FCPX does when importing a clip. Is Compressor 4 needed if (as it appears to me) FCPX transcodes the clips?

Compressor does a lot more than transcode to optimized media. But that's all you want to do you don't need it.

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Why does compressor need to be connected to internet to work?

I am using an 8 core macpro with 10.5.2 installed and final cut pro 6.0.3
when I put a job in compressor and try to submit the job, compressor says it has an unknown time remaining , and nothing ever gets done. That is because I have blocked the out going connection to a couple of ports that my firewall was telling me compressor tried to connect to the internet when I submitted this job.
If I do NOT allow compressor to connect to the internet, I can NOT use it.
After I allow compressor to connect to these weird ports, only then can compressor work.
DId compressor get infected with a virus or something? Why do I need an internet connection to use compressor?

its since I updated to final cut 6.0.3
This problem is not unique to just me, a search for "compressor unknown time remaining" in google shows alot of people with this issue
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=compressorunknown+timeremaining&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
sadly, I have yet to find a solution other then it working on 6.0 and 6.02
please do not say its user error when I have tried all the so called workarounds and none have work.
it works when I let it connected to the ports it connects to, if I do not let it connect to the ports, it doesnt work
Message was edited by: piff aroni

One computer, export to Compressor, need to work on FCP while compressing

Is there a way to use compressor and not to lock up use of FCP?
David

Although Shane is right about "not selfcontained" there are reasons to export selfcontained. If you think you ever might want to go back to this file, I strongly recommend making it selfcontained. A reference qt, points to the original media files and any material that is already rendered. If you try and access this file after you have deleted any of the media or renders, you will have serious problems.

Why is Submit Button Greyed Out on Compressor

Just recently, I have been unable to submit a video for compression. As always, I drag on the compression I want to use and select the destination. I hit the first submit buttn and the window drops down asking for the name of the batch. I enter the name but on this window the submit button is greyed out and I cannot submit the project for compression.
I looked at past instances of this problem and I downloaded and ran Compresser Repair 2.2, but the problem remains.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I have never had this problem before.
Barry O'Brien
Compressor 3.5.3
FCP 7.0.3
OS 10.6.8

Russ,
No worries. Yesterday, I brought the Apple Clean Install instructions to pointed out to me to my IT guy I had him do a clean intall of Compressor using the outline and the problem was solved. It took him an hour. It would have taken me 1/2 a day!
I did have one good bit of advice suggested by Jason Brown over at Creative Cow, but I didn't have time to research it - and my computer was already on my IT guy's bench. He said:
"Let me start by saying I'm not an expert...just a user, so I could be wrong. BUT I fixed my issue after installing fcpx, it moved compressor to a subfolder in applications, but not the Qmaster app. When I ran update, it updated Qmaster to 3.5.3 but compressor was just on 3.5 I took compressor out of that folder, ran update again and they were same version number. U can check version number by looking about under file menu. For Qmaster, select app, get info and its in there."
I think he is suggesting that Emaster and Compressor need simultanious updats, and to do that Apple has to be able to find the files. The fact that Apple has the clean install for Compressor so available and in multiple locations suggsts to me that this is a common problem.
One of the Creative Cow guys said that his production company does complete clean installs off all apps on all machines every 12 to 16 months!
Well, I declare this issue fixed, and thank you for all your help and advice. Hopefully, someone else will find this thread and it will be helpful to them.
Regards,
Barry

How to make a render farm with FCP X / Compressor??

Wondering how to setup a min render farm with FCP X on three machines. Played around with setting in Compressor but never see any machine available when I go to render on each machine?

Ok, so I'm using the wrong terminology.
I want to have all my machines transcode for me, is this possible, yes or no and how do I set it up. I've buggered around with all the settings in the link above but I'd get anything to show up?
Also I believe that compressor needs to copy the entire file to be rendered over the network for the other machine to work on it - is this correct ? I'm on wifi guess I could connect machines together via ethernet.
I'm looking at 4x time to do a simple render on prores proxy material and when I have to do it on a 2 hour wedding video I'll be looking for the nearest bridge to jump off!

Compressor s l o w ! ! WHY???

I've seen the question asked several times, but it's never truely answered. The question: Why is compressor so slow??
I remember years ago finishing a project, and letting DVDSP do the encoding. Those were the good old days. Then, a couple years ago I started using compressor to do my encoding. The result? It took about 8-10 hours to encode a one and a half hour video, and it looked pixelated and ugly as sin. I had a friend turn me on the the 'mpeg2 quicktime encoder' which was no longer available in FCP. I've been using this for a year now and my encoding has looked great, and it encodes quickly.
Cut to today...I thought I would try out the lastest version of Compressor. I figured they worked out all the bugs by now...I just finished a two hour project. Loaded it into compressor...and now I have to wait a whopping 12 HOURS for it to encode??!! 12 HOURS?? Will it encode all the way down to about 2 hours and stay there for 10 hours more?? I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will even fit onto my DVD.
Is it me? Does Compressor need a complete overhaul? Are people really happy with it? Is there a better way? AM I ALONE?????

I've got a similar nonsence: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=883002&tstart=0

Compressor 64-bit and compatibility

I want to use Compressor as part of my FCP workflow. However I have heard that there are crash problems. Is Compressor 4 now 64-bit and are there any alternatives you might recommend? I want to export movies to bespoke medium and small file sizes

So, Compressor is still 32 bit.
As to the stability of the app, you may be interested in what was posted here on a related question.
I think the expectations for FCP X and Compressor need to be different. X is still very early in the development stage while C4 is mature. I have only been using X in any serious way for a few months and even though the latest versions are reportedly a lot more stable than the earlier versions, I still get far more frequent crashes than I ever experienced using Final Cut Studio.
However, I have never had a Compressor crash of any sort…in C3, C3.5, or C4…and I use the software on a daily basis. The only issue I ever had with C4 was a cluster problem, which I was able to resolve.
As far as alternatives are concerned, here is one that's free. It ca do a few tricks that Compressor can't, but C.4 does more overall…and IMHO, can produce higher quality. You might also check out Toast, which is a little more expensive. A lot more expensive are Sorenson Squeeze and Telestream Episode; I believe both have trial versions.
Good luck.
Russ

HELP: Compressor Status: Copying Source Files?????

I posted this problem in the FCP discussions and was told to try here. I have also tried LAFCPUG and Creative Cow with out finding a resolution. I am REALY hoping someone can help me out here....
OK, I just upgraded to FCP Studio last week and have completed editing my first project with FCPS. I export the final sequence as Self Contained QT. I launch Compressor and drop the exported sequence into the batch window, and finally set the audio to Dolby 2,0 and Video to MPEG 2 90 Minutes High Quality.
I click on the submit button and Batch Monitor pops up. However, when I look at the status, the message "Preparing: Copying Source File (.....)" is displayed.
What is going on here and why would Compressor need to "Copy" anything??? Both the Source and destination files are on local, internal discs (same folder actually.
The source file is 16.5 GB and as such copying is adding a considerable amount of time to the processing of the file - After more that 11 hours it has only gotten through a little more that 3.5 GB!!!
This is nuts!!! Under FCP HD, I could export and render an unrendered 2 hour video in around 3 hours; faster than this COPY process is taking!
Can someone tell why this is happening and what I can do to speed things up.
At this rate, I can get better though put results by streaming the final video to a DVD Recorder, ripping the resulting disc and using the resulting rip in DVDSP than I will ever get with Compressor!!!
Any help with this problem is EXTREMELY appreciated!!
NOTE: I installed the FULL Final Cut Studio and ALL available system updates have been run.
PS. I originally tried exporting from FCP directly to Compressor last night (around 11 PM) and when I checked on the Compressor (about 1 pm today), Batch monitor status still reported "Preparing..."!! I killed the job, then exported the sequence out as a QT reference file, dropped the ref file into compressor, and after an hour, the Batch Monitor status showed Copying barely past 500 MB!!!!
This is worse than the times I was getting in FCP 2 on a Dual 500 G4 and completely unacceptable!!! If this kind of through put time is what I have to look forward to with FCPS, I may as well send it back to the Apple Store and reinstall FCP HD and use a DVD Recorder to create DVDs. At least then I can count on REAL TIME processing!!
Thanks,
Gary

This is just a guess, but it almost sounds like Compressor thinks it is configured for distributed processing and therefor it is copying the source to another client. Does the "Cluster" menu at the bottom right of Compressor's batch window show "This Computer" and when you hover the mouse pointer over this same menu do you see a yellow pop-up that references your local system (for example, mine says: "This Computer.waymen-powerbook-g4.local:49240".
If you think this might be the problem you probably want to know that Qmaster now has a command-line interface that allows you to submit jobs, configure, and get status on a number of different aspects of Compressor's background processing.
Below is a link to a post on that interface and some information on how you can actually use the command line to submit jobs to Compressor/Qmaster. There is also some information on this new capability in Compressor's User Manual (Under Help - Compressor User Manual:appendix B). You might also want to look at the Distributed Processing Setup help. Anyway, here is the link:
Waymen, "Compressor & Command line" #4, 03:45pm Aug 4, 2005 CDT
You probably want to review the entire thread related to the above link. I know that this is not a direct solution to your problem but you may learn something about your configuration that will help. You can also get status information on Qmaster and there are some switches or toggles that could affect the behavior of your system. Again, this is all just a guess, but perhaps some internal state in Qmaster has been set incorrectly.

Export Using Compressor from FCP fails every time

When I try to use the File>Export>Using Compressor command in FC Studio 2, everything seems normal until I submit the batch. But the job fails every time.
I get the following message: "Processing service request error: Final Cut Pro.app generated an error or unexpectedly quitUser aborted Media Server".
I've gone through all the discussion stuff on how Compressor needs to be reinstalled and all that. That's not my problem here. Compressor will work fine if I use it standing alone. It's only if I try to use the FCP export that this problem occurs.

Compressor works fine as a stand alone when I import a Quicktime file. However, if I try to export a suquence directly from FCP, it gives me a message "File Error: A file of this name already exists". If I press okay it exports it to Compressor which gives me a message, "Can't preview movie Final Cup Pro App is busy".
Then when I go ahead and load the output settings into compressor ( actual compressor window shows the sequence as being loaded) it starts to render and then it stops with the following message logged
"Name: MPEG-2 6.2Mbps 2-pass
Time Elapsed: 0:00:00
Time Remaining: 0:00:00
Percent Complete: 100
Status: Failed - Final Cut Pro.app generated an error or unexpectedly quitUser aborted Media Server"
Any ideas what the problem might be?
I am using a Mac Pro 8 core with 9gigs of ram and running tiger 10.4.10 and this is FCP Studio 2

Export Using Compressor, from FCP, and Virtual Clustering

Has anyone successfully used Virtual Clustering - that is, setting up shared services for multiple instances so that you can use all 4 or 8 cores on a machine - when exporting timelines directly from FCP to Compressor 3?
I know in theory it doesn't seem like it could work (with FCP send frame-by-frame rather slowly and Compressor needing frames much faster) but Compressor 3's manual (pages 119-120) says that it should work.
I believe I'm following the instructions correctly, but it always fails...

Closin' out.

A workflow to burn AVCHD camcorder video and 5.1 sound to BluRay disc.

A workflow to burn AVCHD camcorder video and 5.1 sound to BluRay disc.
After weeks searching through many posts by the Forum’s experts with Final Cut Pro and Compressor, I have a crude workflow that seems to work for me, and might be of interest to others. This information I couldn’t find in the Help files of either FCP or Compressor, and would appreciate feedback on other options. Thanks to the Forum contributors who have helped me with suggestions.
I have successfully burned a BluRay DVD of the video and audio outputs of my new Panasonic AVCHD camcorder, that is, 1920x1080 video and 5.1 surround sound, using Final Cut Studio 2 (FCP 7.0.2, Compressor 3.5.4.) on an Intel iMac with OS 10.6.3
Using AUNSOFT-PAVTUBE or CLIPWRAP, I converted the camcorder’s MTS files to ProRes 422 .mov files containing 5.1 six channels of audio.
In FCPro, set the Sequence / Settings / Audio Outputs to 5.1 Monitoring:
     L+R Stereo,     Stereo
     Center             Dual Mono
     LFE                Dual Mono
     Ls +Rs            Stereo
Uncheck the “Downmix…to Stereo” in Warning box that pops up when this step is completed.
Drag the ProRes .mov file into the time line of FCP 7:
The next steps are important for assigning each of the six audio channels to the Dolby 5.1 configuration (L, R, C, Lfe, Ls, Rs). This step was new to me and something I couldn’t find in the FCPro or Compressor Help file manual. If anyone can reference a page number, I would appreciate that info.
In the FCP time line, unlink the video from the audio channels (Linked Selection) in the upper right corner of the FCP time line.
Select each audio channel, then right click in the area of the blank column near the padlock. Assign A1, A2, A3 etc to each of the audio channels as they fit the Dolby configuration ( L+R, C, Lfe, Ls+Rs) This process is kind of clunky and it may take patience to accomplish.
The best Forum ideas that I could find for setting up the six channel audio came from the following posts which I credit for their help:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/9095726#9095726
https://discussions.apple.com/message/12525373#12525373
In FCPro, Mark In and Out points, Select In to Out
Under File / Share option ………Select BluRay job……then Select either “Export” or “Send to Compressor”
(Note: At this point, the Option Export which enables FCPro to burn a BluRay DVD, seems to work well, and the resulting DVD video and six channels of audio seems as good as that produced by the more complicated option of “Send to Compressor”……..which is described below.)
If the Send to Compressor option is selected, Compressor is automatically started by this selection. At this point, do not Quit FCPro, because Compressor needs to transfer file data (or something like that) to Compressor.
In the job pane of Compressor, will exist two targets, H264 for BluRay and Dolby Digital.
I deleted the Dolby Digital and replaced it with Dolby Digital Professional Auto.
Clicking any where in the Sequence 1 job pane (not in H264 nor Dolby target rows) will reveal the A/V attributes:
Under the Job Action tab, select the BluRay unit that will eventually do the burning.
Clicking on the target H264 for BluRay located in the larger Job Pane reveals the settings I chose:
Clicking on the target Dolby Digital Professional (Auto) reveals these settings I chose:
I left settings on the Bitstream tab untouched. However the Preprocessing tab, I set the Compression Preset to “None”.
I found that turning on the BluRay burner with a preloaded BD/RE is best to do at this time, or even better, to energize the burner at the time that the “Send to Compressor” function is activated.
When settings are complete, select “Submit” in the lower corner of the Compressor larger pane and processing will begin, and a status pane indicating time elapsed and time remaining will appear. These estimates are not very accurate.
I have found that my 1 minute test video was initially estimated to require about two hours of processing time, but actually required only 1 hour which is still unusually long. Based on my experience, be prepared for an “overnight” processing to occur for longer movie durations.
This is the part of the overall process I need to understand better: How to estimate the duration to encode and burn 1 minute of video / audio? This 1 hour duration for 1 minute of video/audio was the same whether I SHARE-Exported to FCPro to burn DVD, or SHARE-Send to Compressor option.
Wondering if the encoding of the six 5.1 audio channels caused the lengthy processing(?). Perhaps settings that I made in Compressor affected time to process and burn.
Finally, I hope this poorly written process will help someone who has been looking for the same information as I had been. I would appreciate feedback from those who have already done this; what OS are you using, what hardware are you using? What software package have you tried. And lastly, Thanks to all who contribute to these Community Forums, who take the time to detail their processes. You all have helped me to get this far.
BoBo

Go to https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4719249
BoBo

"This Computer" Not showing up in clusters.

When I try and submit a batch "This Computer" doesn't show up under my cluster options. This just started Friday, but I didn't get around to try and troubleshoot it until now (Tuesday) because of the holiday weekend. In Batch Monitor it doesn't show up in the left column either in the cluster list. We have another cluster that it is compressing on instead, but the machine that is set up on that cluster isn't nearly as fast as this Mac Pro so it isn't really an option. Has anyone else heard of this? I tried clearing my preferences, but com.Apple.CompressorShared.plist or something is missing. I read to delete it and com.Apple.Compressor.Compressor.plist. I also tried clearing QMaster cache, but that didn't help either.

I had the same problem and I just found the answer.
I noticed that sometimes my local cluster showed up in the cluster options, other times it didn't.
The answer (at least for me), is to reboot your computer then launch Compressor. Seems like Final Cut pro might grab up some resources that Compressor needs. Just quitting FCP doesn't bring back the cluster. If I have run FCP and I need to use compressor, rebooting the computer brings back my cluster 100% of the time.
Hope this helps,
Matt

Components missing...?

Trying to watch some trailers, Quick Time informs me that some third party components are missing. It opens a webside with all of them.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/resources/components.html
How do I know, which one should I download ?
Should I download them all...?
Thanks
bafomet

The components on that page are rarely used. If you can open the video (even if the video doesn't play) then check MovieInfo (Command-I) to find the compressor. Someone here may be able to tell you where to find it. If you can't even open the movie then check the site the video came from for info on the compressor needed. If it is an avi file you could try this Divx decompressor, although it may not work for you.
http://labs.divx.com/archives/000057.html
If all else fails try viewing the video using this alternative video viewer: VLC

Preserving original interlacing while compressing to MPEG-2 video?

One of our partner companies seems to have trouble creating interlaced MPEG-2 .m2v files using Compressor -- it always comes out progressive, no matter what options are used. Perhaps a bit of (boring) background to understand the situation:
We are a non-profit and currently negotiating with a third party to receive many hundreds of their videos for a streamable version of their video archive we're building. The originals are losslessly compressed and for some reason interlaced -- they were probably taken from Beta SP tape that way.
Our archival system would like to take MPEG-2 as "high-quality" (comparatively) input and then renders to many formats (H.264 etc.) in many containers for streaming. We do deinterlacing on those input files, if they come interlaced.
We would like to preserve this MPEG-2 file for future compression runs in future streaming formats that don't exist yet, so we think it makes sense to stay as close as possibe to the losslessly compressed original format that the third party gave us.
Can Compressor preserve the interlacing that was in the lossless source file or is this pointless? Does Compressor need to deinterlace the material anyway in order to be able to compress?
If there is no way to preserve the original interlacing and if a deinterlacing pass is part of the compression process anyway, then we'll ask for progressive material from Compressor, otherwise it would be nice to stay close to the source.
Any opinion or information is much appreciated

Thanks a lot for your response. Yes, it's 25 fps PAL video, I have one version in Apple Lossless and one in DV. So far I have tried the DV version, because I'm certain that one is interlaced. More tests with lossless follow today.
But as I understand it, most codecs today are block-based and thus would need a non-interlaced full picture to work at all? It doesn't make sense to look for blocks in material that comes in cut up bits and pieces, one half-picture per frame? So from that perspective, it would make sense for Compressor to deinterlace the source material before encoding it anyway, whether we tell it to or not.
Thanks for confirming that MPEG-2 output can be interlaced with Compressor, that's one less thing to worry about. What I'm left wondering is whether it is even mathematically possible to preserve the original interlacing through to the output MPEG-2
I'm doubting this more and more.
Probably using decent-quality deinterlacing in Compressor and making the resulting MPEG-2 progressive would do more to preserve the quality of the source material.

Can I distribute rendering through multiple computers?

I have two computers wit 10.9.1 and I currently set them up to run with compressor and distributed processing.
Final Cut has prompted me before on whether or not I wanted to use computers for distributed processing, but I'm not sure that I can do this on Mavericks... I think Compressor needs Qmaster to not exist in order to work.
Has anyone had any luck with this?

No...in my first post I said, quote; "FCP doesn't use distributed rendering...Compressor does."
You cannot use distributed rendering on FCP 7 or earlier. Not even sure it's possible with FCX, but I cannot comment on that as I don't use it. But I didn't hear any mention of it...I think I would have if it were possible as it's a big deal.
The only apps that use distributed rendering are; Shake, Compressor. Period.
Shake was discontinued...so now it's only Compressor.

Anyway to convert m3u playlist for zen vision

i wana convert them cause i dont wana go thru 00 items and add everything all over takes forever

Avi is a container format, not a single compression format like mpeg. You will have to determine what compression method is used with the avi files, then find out if such a decompressor/compressor is available for QT for Windows. If you have a sample avi file that works with the Zen application then right-click on the file icon and choose Properties/Details. That should reveal the compression method used. The next step will be to do a search for an avi compressor for QT for Windows. Be aware that not all such compressors are available in a form useable for QT for Windows.
Of couse, it may be simpler to just get in contact with the makers of this Zen application and ask them where to get the compressors needed.

Compressor 4 needed?

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