Web Compression Questions

February 21, 2007

Hello,

I have a question about web compression. Apple's Compressor seems to be amazing and I have seen unbelievable results come out of it.

The problem is I am not a Mac user. So if I were to edit something on Adobe Premier Pro, would I then be able to take an AVI file, burn it as data onto a DVD, put it on a friend's Mac, and run it through Compressor with great results?

Or does it all depend on going through the whole final cut system? Is AVI supported by Compressor?

Is there anything as good as Compressor for PCs?

Lastly, how does one avoid the dreaded interlacing frames when compressing something that originated on film?

Would editing in 24 fps avoid this?

Thanks a bunch,

Luke

Alessandro Machi · February 21, 2007

Hello,

I have a question about web compression. Apple's Compressor seems to be amazing and I have seen unbelievable results come out of it.

The problem is I am not a Mac user. So if I were to edit something on Adobe Premier Pro, would I then be able to take an AVI file, burn it as data onto a DVD, put it on a friend's Mac, and run it through Compressor with great results?

Or does it all depend on going through the whole final cut system? Is AVI supported by Compressor?

Is there anything as good as Compressor for PCs?

Lastly, how does one avoid the dreaded interlacing frames when compressing something that originated on film?

Would editing in 24 fps avoid this?

Thanks a bunch,

Luke

This is a "fringe" answer, not directly what you are asking about but something else to consider. Apparently, there are two competing "component" signals that NLE systems incorporate. Some NLE systems and software programs use component RGB for color correction and after affects while other NLE systems may use component R-Y, B-Y, Y. These two component systems are not entirely compatible with each other and unfortunately many software programs use one but not the other. A software program should be able to work in either RGB or R-Y, B-Y, Y component systems.

So, besides contending with different codecs, you may also be dealing with one system that works in RGB, and another that works in R-Y, B-Y, Y.

February 21, 2007

This is a "fringe" answer, not directly what you are asking about but something else to consider. Apparently, there are two competing "component" signals that NLE systems incorporate. Some NLE systems and software programs use component RGB for color correction and after affects while other NLE systems may use component R-Y, B-Y, Y. These two component systems are not entirely compatible with each other and unfortunately many software programs use one but not the other. A software program should be able to work in either RGB or R-Y, B-Y, Y component systems.

So, besides contending with different codecs, you may also be dealing with one system that works in RGB, and another that works in R-Y, B-Y, Y.

I apologize for my ignorance, but I do not understand some of what you have said.

Basically I would like to know if you can drop an AVI from Adobe Premier Pro 2.0 into Apple's Compressor. If anyone has done this or has experience with this let me know.

Thanks,

Luke

Mike Bove · February 21, 2007

I actually just had a crash course in this matter this past weekend. The problem was I had some HDV footage I wanted to edit into my reel but my computer doesn't support HDV, and my friend has a G5 which does.

So what I did is edited it just how I wanted it, exported to my external HD, hooked that up to the mac and cut in the HDV shots where I had the blank spaces just how I wanted it. Then from there we exported it to quicktime files (both large and for the web), burned those to DVD and popped them back on my comp. So it is possible.

However when we tried transferring the completed video from the mac back to my HD, it didn't work (thus we just burned a DVD).

I am very impressed with the quicktime pro compressor. It shrunk almost a gig of footage down to 19.7 mb for applications on the web and it looks fantastic for how small a file it is.

This may not be too technical of an answer, but hope it helps.

Jim Keller · February 21, 2007

Is there anything as good as Compressor for PCs?

Compressor actually was Apple's answer to Discreet's Cleaner. I believe Cleaner is available for PC, and supports most Mac and PC file formats. (Even as a Mac user, I still use it because it can do Windows Media, which Compressor can not.) I'm not going to say Cleaner is "as good" as Compressor because the two packages are actually quite different, each with strengths and weaknesses.

Phil Rhodes · February 21, 2007

Hi,

All any of these things are doing is setting various parameters in the encoder software that already exists on the machine. Therefore, none of them can do anything you can't do with a bit of trial and error. You can export nicely compressed Quicktime directly from Premiere.

Phil

February 21, 2007

Thanks everyone for the information.

For years all roads have been pointing toward Mac, and I think the time has come for me to actually look into buying one.

Then this won't be an issue anymore.

Thanks,

Luke

Jim Keller · February 22, 2007

Hi,

All any of these things are doing is setting various parameters in the encoder software that already exists on the machine. Therefore, none of them can do anything you can't do with a bit of trial and error. You can export nicely compressed Quicktime directly from Premiere.

Phil

That's not strictly true. Cleaner actually intelligently searches for redundant information to allow greater compression for the quality than Premiere alone can do.

Adam Frisch FSF · February 22, 2007

AVI files are not natively supported in Quicktime. To play AVI files on QT one needs a special plug in that's a bit cumbersome, hence why most people use VLC Player for AVI files. Compressor doesn't support AVi either, since it's not a QT format.

As for Compressor - it's codecs are pretty good and it does nice work, but it's not the easiest program to get

good results out of. It has some user interface problems and you need to know a bit about compression to handle it well. One good thing is that it beats Cleaner in rendering speed hands down.