Not Improving

Update: I’ve dual rendered videos for the past couple of weeks. Compressor uses around 600-620% of my 8 virtual cores. FCPX utilizes around 450% plus about 75% of GPU ability. Yet Compressor takes 2-3 times as long to render under the exact same settings (and boy does my Mac get HOT). I don’t know why and I’ve been contacted by Apple about it. So we’ll see if I’m misunderstanding something technical or if there’s an actual issue.

Edit 4.1.2 and beyond: I’ve downloaded iStat Pro and watched how Compressor utilizes my CPU (quad-core i7 with HT) and GPU vs how FCP uses it. The short, it appears that Compressor is not taking advantage of all my threads while FCP does. I think that probably accounts for why I can render a 45 min podcast in about the same time, whereas Compressor takes 3+ hours. Going to do some more research to make sure I’m not missing something, but I’m afraid my days of using Compressor are over.

Edit 4.1: At last a new interface. Prettiness and likeness to the other FCPX programs aside, I find this interface must easier to use with just a few short minutes of exploring. However….as most other reviewers note, the ability to connect multiple instances through Qmaster is temporarily gone, so beware if you depend on that. (I don’t but would probably be understandably upset if I did.)

Edit 4.0.7: Not seeing any improvements from previous version. Still takes forever to render the same kind of file I have always done. Still no direct Vimeo uploading.

Edit 4.0.6: Something is up with my workflow. Vimeo upload is still broken. But more importantly, it is taking 6-8 hours to render a video that used to render in 1-2. I havent changed any of my settings. Its the same project each week. In fact, the only thing that has changed is the version # of this product. And given the other comments, Im not very optimistic. All the processing "oomph" has left this product. Very concerning…

Theres really not much different here. Qmaster is integrated into the menu, but really I cant find too much else different. 64-bit support of course. I basically bought it so I could export directly to it from FCP X. In FCS, the direct export to Compressor would take FOREVER to do the final encode. The work-around was to command-E out of FCP, then import into Compressor. In this version, the direct export works like it is supposed to. So I suppose that makes it worth it.

bpeacock about Compressor