Resize in Compressor or FCP?

I've noticed that one of the most taxing thing for Compressor is the cropping and resizing of video when I'm encoding for the web. I noticed this when I chained to jobs one first resized and cropped and the second did the encoding. I was surprised how fast it actually encoded into H.264.

I heard some people suggesting I do my resizing in FCP and then just let Compressor handle th encoding. Anybody have any opinions or Pros and Cons on this approach vs. letting Compressor handle all of it?

Good grief, no. Final Cut does only a nearest-neighbor scale, while Compressor offers both linear interpolation and optical flow.

Wow, while I have no idea what that meant, I'm impressed enough to believe you. Anyone got an alternate opinion?

> I noticed this when I chained to jobs one first resized and cropped and the second did the
>encoding. I was surprised how fast it actually encoded into H.264.

That little gearbox next to the frame controls should have something to do with it. Turn it to "off", and not "auto". Quality wise, it's a trade off between quality and time. Turn it on, and set resizing to best if you want good quality, set it to "off" for preview purposes.



www.strypesinpost.com

He's saying Compressor gives you options while FCP only has one option for scaling. And it's not a very good one.

Resizing your media is key for a good encode. Asking h264 to properly scale and encode source media for web is too much for one pass. Here's a visual example i did on my blog to show you what i mean.

If you don't want to make a master copy or do the two stage process, you can simply turn on Frame Controls like Strypes said but then you're taking up a lot of time in Compressor and you only get your web version at the end. Exporting your scaled Master version to ProRes HQ doesn't take that long and gets you the best quality master that you can then take to DVD, web, etc

Dude, what a gret article and a great example. I've been sizing and encoding all at once. I have been using frame controls which made a big difference, but seeing your example has re-inspired me to use a two step process again.

I encode a daily tv show, so time is of the essence. I have a cluster with:

8Core Mac Pro
5 Dual Processor G5's and a
Dual G4 tower

Typically I capture my original footage into FCP (already edited) and do some audio touch up then export a self contained ProRes video. From there I drop it into Compressor. I have tried chaining my jobs to first size then encode, but the cluster can't keep up with it. it keeps loosing the sized file location and can't finish.

But I think it's still worth the effort to do this in a two step process if it looks that much better.

Thanks for the article and info!!!

I must caution you not to export from FCP using a virtual cluster. It won't work and will only cause headaches.

You have to export from FCP using a single instance and then take that high-res master back into FCP. I've never had much success with Job Chaining either, although I wish i had. The good part is that this master can be used with your virtual cluster and then you can let you're cores fly.

I export episodic web content all the time and i always use this as my workflow.