Apple Compressor Professional Training

my name is Stanislaw Robert Luberda with AV-Ultra and today we're going to be talking about Apple compressor a lot of people tend to ask me if they need or should be using Apple compressor and I feel that it is extremely important if you're producing a lot of work for different people or if you're mastering work for specific formats when you open up Apple compressor it tends to look a little bit like this now I never actually run it like this usually I have my settings open on the side here and my inspector on the other what Apple compressor really is is a batch encoder and a precise encoder so if I'm in let's say Final Cut and I want to export something I'll have my file and I'll have share and I have a few different options here what if I wanted something to be very specific or if I wanted to have a watermark or if I needed it to go to three different people in three different formats that's something that's very limiting by Final Cut Pro and that's where Apple compressor really comes in if I have a file here and I'm just going to go ahead and grab something that I've already worked on before and I've got this file here of getting started with Apple motion that was done in 4k and I want to go ahead and I'm going to add this file to my encoder and you'll notice the very first thing that happens here is it's created this little highlighted area this is referred to as a job and a job can have multiple different exports in here you'll notice that I can go ahead and add more files to this and kind of build up more and more things but all this is considered one job right now or one batch the only thing in here is the getting started with Apple motion and by default right now it has a setting of dxv and a location of desktop now those are what I had set up and they may not be on your machine so let's talk about what these are right here this is what I've imported in and it gives me information all about this so this is telling me what the file name is what it's originally in so this is actually in an h.264 in 4k a progressive etc and it tells me the duration of this it also gives me some other information if there is keywords or descriptions now what if I wanted to change this to let's say a 720 version well right now this is going to go out as a DX v codec that I had set up and it's going to export in 1920 by 1080 progressive 2997 AAC stereo and it's going to go on my desktop with this filename that may or may not be what I want to do let's talk about our settings here and our settings panel we have a series of different presets that are built into Apple compressor by default more often than that people will tend to be using the pro res perhaps maybe the motion graphics or the video sharing services down here for my example I'm going to go ahead and drag this into here and now that is going to make that in HD 1080p and put that on my desktop so if I click this now you'll see it says h.264 1920 by 1080 etc if I wanted to make this into a 720 I can drag that in here and all I'm doing is I'm changing the resolution here we're going to get to this in a minute what if I wanted to actually change this to let's say a pro res file well I can go ahead and do that and what this is going to do is take the original file that was done in 4k and right now it's going to export it at 3840 by 2160 progressive etc because the original file was in 4k it wants to spit it back out in 4k you'll also notice that it gives me an estimated file size so 4 to 2 is not very compressed so my estimated file size will be a hundred and thirty-five gigabytes for this 30 minute video so if those of you who are working on weddings if you're dealing with let's say a two to three hour wedding you may not want to export in Perez 4 to 2 you're going to want something as a deliverable codec and that's usually in the h.264 codec I have a lot of people ask me which codec they should be using to export to and that is a much bigger conversation what I want you to realize though is the bigger the file size and the less compressed of a codec so let's say Apple ProRes or DNxHD it's going to encode a little quicker if you're dealing with something in the h.264 s that is a very compressed codec and it is a lot harder on the machine and it takes a lot more time to actually do that in code so I'm actually a professional VFX artist and a motion graphics producer for a couple companies right now I'm working for Wisconsin Public Television and a lot of the stuff I do has to go out for broadcast and because it's out in broadcast I have a specific format I need to go in and that is in the avid dnxhd you'll notice I don't have an avid dnxhd here what I need to do is actually make my own presets to get started with if I don't have anything here and I'm just going to get rid of this ProRes I'm going to come down to this bottom left corner and I'm going to add a setting and in here I can choose a new setting it's going to ask me what kind of format and what I want to name it I know that this is going to be a QuickTime movie I'm going to go ahead and name this so I've created this avid dnxhd 145 for my work and you'll notice it popped up under my custom formats if I go over to the right hand side under my inspector it gives me information about that and you'll notice right now it says Apple ProRes 4 to 2 HQ etc that isn't what I want and that isn't what I have what I picked but because I picked a QuickTime it just defaulted into pro res so I need to change this and I'm going to go under my video here and you'll notice that here I can change my frame size so I can say now everything is going to come out at 1920 by 1080 and I can choose the frame rate at 29.97 if I have it as automatic by the way it's going to pick whatever it originally was so if I drop in a 4k piece of footage it's going to spit out a 4k piece of footage if I put in a 720 it's going to give me a 720 I know for broadcast everything I need to send out is going to go 1920 by 1080 at 2997 so I want to make sure everything I throw at this is going to come out that way now I will need to change my codec and that's where I'm going to pick right here and under my compression type this is all the codecs I currently have installed on my machine more often than not you're going to have a these codecs and which ones do you use again it really depends on what you're going to do you'll notice though I have my ProRes I've got my avid I've got my hdvs at my XD cams and I never really use any of these more often than not though I'm always picking h.264 avid dnxhd or pro res if I'm working with say After Effects files sometimes I will go into animation for our purposes right now though I'm going to go ahead and build out this avid an x HD codec and you'll notice it's has my frame rate I can set my millions of colors I can set my color space specify whether or not there's an alpha Channel and in here I'm going to go ahead and pick my bitrate so I know I'm actually going to go out of 1080i 59.94 145 bitrate I'm going to go ahead and hit OK so that's under my video now I'm going to go under my audio and I can specify what I'm going to pick here so I can actually choose linear post-cold modulation AAC audio etc so for me you know I think I'm supposed to go out of linear PCM and so I'm going to go ahead and hit OK this is set up so if I drag this over to my getting start with Apple motion here you'll notice that my general here now says hey this file is going to be 193 gigabytes it's going to be in the avid codec 1920 by 1080 now I want to do a couple of these maybe I'm going to have one that's going to go to my producer and I have another one that's going to go on to YouTube I'm going to drag this video sharing services HD 1080p and drag that on here as well and you'll notice now I have two different outputs and I have two different file names so this one is going to say 4k uhd avid dnxhd 145 the reason for that is because it had the original file name here but I can go ahead and change that if I want to so I can just say getting start with Apple motion and now I have my HD 1080 my DNxHD and if I select this guy you'll notice I have this time indicator this will actually give me a preview of my video file and playback in here so I can kind of compare and contrast now what exactly am i comparing and contrasting here well if I go under my video sections I can actually add different filters and different effects to my outputted video why would I want to do something like this well again if I'm sending something over to a producer maybe it's not ready to go to air yet so I'm going to get rid of this avid but I'm sending over a quick preview or another case might be I'll actually make a 720 version that's very very small so it's going to go a little bit quicker and I can email this and a wetransfer or send it through the the network and now I've got this 1280 by 720 and I can add a video effect so I can say add a timecode generator and I'll do this a lot so that way the producer can specify exactly where they want changes or I can add some other different effects so there is a great noise removal effect that I've actually used before and it works pretty darn good it's not you know something that I could depend on on the day-to-day but if I'm just cleaning up something a little bit I find that it works out pretty well I also have text overlays so I can just say for preview and I'm just going to come over here and just say and I can specify my font and where it's going to sit so in my case here I'm going to say lower center title safe and you can see half of its cutoff right now because it's before and after so this is my preview this is my original and then this is my master output with this HD 720 you can also change your font sizes and font types for me I'm going to leave that as is the second thing I have here are locations so right now I have some built in and then I have some custom ones so if I have a copy that's going to go to let's say my Dropbox that's going to go here maybe I have a second one that's going to go to a different producer and they need a higher-quality one and I'm going to make a 1080p version and so now I can have a different set of video effects what's great about these video effects is you can actually bundle these with your custom presets so if you're always going to have one that's going to go out to a preview you can bundle all those different video effects and put it right in there so that way every time you drop that it's going to have that for preview it's going to have the timecode generator and it saves you a lot of time another thing I really like here is a watermark so you're sending something to a client you want to make sure that it doesn't somehow by accident get out into the wild before it's supposed to or before a check clears you can watermark your footage to protect you and your clients so now I have a couple different outputs and I have a couple different locations I can specify my individual exports I can even add post render actions so at the very bottom here if I select the actual job here so this is my batch and I can go to in action I can say hey when this is done make sure you open it with an application or maybe publish it to Vimeo or YouTube run an automated workflow or even send an email so if you make something that's really really small you can go ahead and send it off as an email if you want to publish to YouTube you can actually do that right from compressor here you can sign in and you can actually add your titles and descriptions and as soon as it's done encoding it'll actually upload to YouTube now I'm going to go ahead and just say do nothing here and I'm going to go ahead and start this batch so this is really the same thing that's running just twice in two different exports and if I start that badge it's going to go into the active mode once it's in the active mode these are all the different jobs that your compressor is actively working on depending on your codecs you might be able to work on multiple ones at the same time for example if I'm running in ProRes or avid dnxhd I can use concurrent jobs or job segmenting to speed up my renders but because these are both h.264 they do not allow for job segmenting so you're just gonna have to wait one after the other once they're complete they'll show up in a lap in a large batch and you can actually find them so it'll tell you if they're successful if they've been cancelled so I have few down here I cancelled these I wasn't ready for them or I've had a couple of them fail and they'll be bright red and they'll let you know they failed you can tell where these things originally came from by their little icons here so I actually produce something in a final cut earlier and that actually came from Final Cut while these I just dropped in I have other ones that actually came from motion and these were motion titles that I had dropped in and these were successful it also lets me see lapse time of how long it took so that is a brief overview of Apple compressor it's something that I tend to use on a day-to-day basis when I'm sending out files to different people it for me it's a no-brainer it's something that I feel should have been included in final cut or motion to begin with but here it lets me fine-tune exactly how I can get my exports out one last thing I want to talk about here which is a little bit of advanced topic is this process on this computer if you have multiple Macs on the same wired network you want to make sure they're wired or not Wireless you can actually leverage those computers and render things all at the same time as long as those codecs support jobs segmenting so for example I have two machines right here my office and one is unavailable and this one is busy however if they were both available and wired to the network I could double my render speed in ProRes or DNxHD so that literally cuts my render time in half and it is a super useful feature I have another tutorial I'm working on specifically about this it's just going to take a little bit longer to get out there so if that's something you're looking for make sure you subscribe again my name is StanislawRobert Luberda with AV-Ultra and hopefully you found this information useful

Channel: AV-Ultra

Views: 115,725

Keywords: Stanislaw Robert Luberda, Apple Compressor, How to use apple compressor, Final cut pro X, Is apple compressor worth it, Speed up render in FCPX, apple, compressor, FCPX, Compressor, AV-Ultra, compressor 4.3, compressor 4, apple compressor tutorial, apple compressor review, compressor apple, apple motion, apple compressor, apple compressor 4.3 tutorial, apple compressor 4, apple compressor mp4, compressor tutorial, how to use apple compressor, apple compressor settings

Id: D1uLDlt-fPw

Length: 14min 35sec (875 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 28 2016