Compressor App Reviews

"Useless Updates”, “Useless Product” 4.1.3 stills doesn’t run on my 12 core Mac. Get it together or drop this waste of time product. Compressor refuses to run on Mavericks, it completely locks up my 12 Core Machine and many times causes dots to appear all over my monitor. Ive tried everything I can possibly find on the internet to fix it and it still doesnt work. Thanks

I have an issue where Apple does not let me update my FCP. Unil they get their act together I am on 10.1.1 Now the Compressor is updated and won’t work unles i update FCP to 10.1.2 or high…. Apple support is terrible.

Formerly I used third party apps or simply used the output formats from FCPX, Motion, etc. I finally opted to purchase the Apple product expecting seemless integration. Wrong! Compressor would repeatedly freeze even when direct export from FCPX worked. A year later it is still a unreliable and quite frankly, I haven’t really figured out its benefit, even when it does work. Its navigation is clunky at best, it’s not quicker than other apps. Sometimes it would show that file is actively processing and when you return (hours later), nope - it failed. Having just frozen again prompted me to write this. Currently there is an old file clogging the Active list that can’t be erased. It acts like there is a dialogue window open but there isn’t. Can’t remember what I paid but it was too much.

Version 4.2.0 and 4.2.1 seem to output dnx 36 as 175 (oversized data rate). Something seems broken in that regard. For the rest everything working as expected, even if I can’t say for every format as I am mainly involved with h264 and dnx hd.

I’ve already logged a bug with apple but beware that presets that work and produce good quality quicktimes [specifically] mp4 files as that is what we are working with in Compressor v4.2.2 will appear artifacted and soft when using the exact same preset in 4.3. I have yet to hear back if they will be fixing this but beware your upgrading…it was a disappointment as the new interface is nice but quality is far more important when using at a professional level. Hopefully a 4.3.1 or 4.4 is coming soon but it took quite a while to get from 4.2.2 to 4.3 so fingers are not crossed. Bit of another pro app disappointment.

This app is the perfect companion to Final Cut Pro X and adds a lot of customizability to video exports. As a standalone app it is not compatible with a lot of types of video, such as XAVC-s encoded MP$ files, but if you have FCPX and deliver to diverse formats, it’s a must-have.

Besides support for a few new codecs and a slightly simplified GUI, theres not much to speak of here. The one reason that I bought this app is that I can use it across 5 computers now, and saves a lot of money in my production studio. Also, it doesnt have the new look and feel that Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5 has, not that Im super thrilled about those either.

The current version of Compressor is unreliable and projects in the active list cannot be cancelled even after a period of 5 months!! I have deleted and reinstalled the app several times and that still does not remedy the situation. I absolutely cannot recommend this app as is. Terrible.

1) Crashes - EXE_BAD_ACCESS - Apple please use Instrumetns to Fix it. There is a nice Tool Called Zombee. 2) QMaster / Distributed Compressing just does not work. if clusters are shown than they dont work, if they start encoding than they crashes. Very bad for Apple, very bad...

Please add retina support for the app!

i send from Final Cut to Compressor. im waiting about 40 minutes. then transcoding freezes. and nothing happens. i can’t pause or remove this process. it just stays in queue and nothing happens. and how to work with that? and every time this way.

Looking at conversion speed and processor load it seems that it does not use multi-thread at all. On 4-core CPU QT10 converts to h.264 four times faster. Generally it looks like an old version wraped in new glamour skin.

Non usavo compressor da un po’ di tempo, ieri l’ho ricomprato, volevo creare un DVD “decente” per il mio progetto. Bene, esporto da final cut e dopo circa 50 minuti va in crash; allora decido di usare l’import da compressor, lo carico, lo mando in masterizzazione, e dopo 90 minuti mi compare questo messaggio di errore: “The disc can’t be burned; it might be incompatibile with this disc drive. Please try a different brand of disc, or try burning at a slower speed”. Ho provato a cambiare DVD (comunissimi Verbatim), settaggi vari, ma il risultato è sempre lo stesso. A meno che non stia facendo qualche errore di base (magari qui qualcuno può aiutarmi), credo di aver buttato 44 euro..

Apple has made a great Compressor at a fantastic price, for that - 5 stars. BUT to not have a Watch Folder option like all the other top tier Compression software (Adobe, Telestream, Sorenson) is disappointing to say the least. For automating video compression go elsewhere. (Sorry, droplets dont cut it).

For some reason Compressor does not utilize multiple GPUs for transcoding, unlike FCPX. If you have multiple GPUs (like the Mac Pro) FCPX will utilize both while transcoding in the background, speeding things up by a factor of nearly four over Adobe Media Encoder and others. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect Apple to impliment this in Compressor as well but they have not so you will find no speed benefit if you have multiple GPUs. For shame!

Cut my first film in the mid ‘70s. Went digital as soon as I was able. Working broadcast for many, many years and loving Compressor since its initial release. This new version is very cleaned up, easy to use, and flexible. Gets the job done. Can’t live without this. Presets that FCPX and Motion can use, Droplets, command line use, I’d never want to work without it.

This is my first review. I felt compelled to write it. Compressor is exceedingly slow, ineffective and the layout isn’t visually engaging. Stick with FCPX for compressing. If the codec you’re looking for isn’t available go to a professional. It’s not worth the headache. Do not waste your money. Use the $50+ dollars on something else. Coincidentally, Apple conveniently hasn’t responded to my refund request.

90% of the time I use Compressor to convert files, it hangs and never finishs the batch. I have to trash prefs and all that stuff and loose a lot of time. I wish it worked.

The deinterlacing part of this software is not good, I spent the better half of the night researching and figuring out what software to buy and because the old versions seem to work well, I bought this one, I regret it. If youre trying to de-interlace footage, buy something else, it seems to change the frame rate on some of my videos so I will give it two stars but because I spent so much time reloading and figuring out the best possible export for the deinterlaced footage, I havent been able to really give it much attention. I dont write any previews, in fact this is probably my fifth, but because I had such a frustrating evening and now morning, I had to write this.

the new version of compressor converts media much slower than the previous version… under the old version i converted a 5 minute clip in less than a half-hour… with the new version, same video specs, same conversion, a 3 minute clip wasn’t even halfway done after an hour.