Media Manager or Compressor

Can someone please verify, is there any difference in quality by rendering a proxy version of my rushes using Media Manager in FCP as appose to Compressor?

Not so it matters. You could have more control in Compressor, but these are proxies after all.

All the best,

Tom

Nope, but unless I'm mistaken, Compressor is faster since you can configure it to use multiple cores if you have a multiprocessor mac. Media Manager I think is limited to just 1 or 2.

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"What do you mean there's no undo?"

Matthew Celia
matt@fcpguru.com
www.fcpguru.com

Most important of all, Compressor doesn't tie up your edit system. You can process on just a few processors in the background while continuing to work.

is it possible to tell compressor to use the exact same name and not add the additional extension?

Example, the original file name is: rochelle.mov but compressor will encode it to: rochelle-Apple ProRes 422 (Proxy).mov

Depends on your computer I guess. FCP can be a complete dog with Compressor running in the background. I find I'd rather walk away than try to work.

All the best,

Tom

Yes, just edit the name. But Compressor won't overwrite an existing file. Also, you should really start a new thread when you have an unrelated question. Lots of people don't bother to read threads they aren't interested in directly or can't contribute to.

Ok thanks Jeff.... writing thread now

Something I've learned about Compressor, Tom, is that you should figure out how many processors you want it to use, then fire off half that many instances of it. At least on 3.0.6 (I haven't really pushed 3.5 heavily) each transcode process takes up about two CPUs worth of cycles. So if you've got an eight-proc system and you want to reserve four to work on, tell Qmaster to start two Compressor instances.

I haven't seen that documented anywhere, but empirically it seems to work for me.

>is it possible to tell compressor to use the exact same name and not add the additional extension?

Yes. Go to the destinations tab. Create a custom location (right click, duplicate), under output filename template, delete "setting name", keep "source media name".

Go back to settings tab, create a custom setting in Compressor, rename it and in the actions tab, change default destination to the one you have created.

The other way is to create a droplet (which could be better, considering the lag in Compressor).



www.strypesinpost.com

Thanks so much Gerard

> is that you should figure out how many processors you want it to use, then fire off half that
>many instances of it.

Hmm... I figured "instances" means one logical processor? Once had a session where I had to encode a DVD and edit. It was a dual G5 then, and I switched Qmaster to 1 instance and continued to edit.

The only other issue is RAM usage, which you have no control of with Qmaster, but it doesn't eat up that much RAM usually.



www.strypesinpost.com

In Qmaster parlance, "instance" means one running ? um ? instance. @#$%&.

Okay, go to the dock. Click Safari once. That's one instance of Safari running. Click it again. Nothing happens. But if something did happen, you'd have two instances of Safari running.

An instance is not a thread (if you know that term), and it's not a processor. It's a single process, in Unix terminology.

It seems like each CompressorTranscoderX process in 3.0 will consume on the order of 150-190% of a single CPU, which means it's equivalent to two CPUs, which means 8 instances on an 8-proc system won't really run much faster than 4 instances, and may in fact run slower because of cache contention and context switching issues. Note that this is not necessarily true under 3.5. Like I said, I haven't really tested it.

Useful info guys , cheers for that.....