Crazy-fast with hardware acceleration, you

I tested this looking for a replacement for Telestream Episode. Compressor 4 is a big improvement over Compressor 3 (which Id tried and discarded years ago as part of Final Cut Studio). The new UI is decent- a little confusing sometimes, but leaps and bounds ahead of Episode. The complete lack of video MP4 presets seemed odd- everything was MOV containers, even the video sharing services presets. My understanding is that theyre the same thing (to the degree that you can just change the filename and itll work), but creating a video file as a proper mp4 requred building a new custom preset from scratch. Speaking of presets, Fast Start (which is referred to as optimize for network use) is turned off by default in every built-in preset, including some where it should definitely be on. Lack of native WMV support is a potential issue, but Ive been transitioning lately to offering just MP4s and noone has complained.

With hardware acceleration, its really fast. The first time I ran a test job I thought I was accidentally only processing the audio track or something. On my late-2013 MacBook Pro, a file that normally takes ~35 minutes in Episode or Handbrake (both using the x264 library), took three and a half minutes! With basically identical settings (x264: very slow preset, film tuning, CRF20 or 6Mbit 2-pass. Apple: 2-pass, 6Mbit), it takes one *tenth* the time. On a machine that doesnt support the hardware acceleration though, it was ridiculously slow. Using an early 2008 dual-quad-core Mac Pro which takes about the same time as the MBP using x264 libraries, Compressor with identical settings took an hour and forty minutes. Unfortunately, I could find no details available anywhere describing what systems support the hardware acceleration.

The quality is very close, but I think not quite as good as x264 at the same bitrate when using the very slow preset and proper tuning. Fine detail suffered, although motion did seem a little less artifacty with Compressor. My girlfriend got tired of me asking her to squint at still frames as I toggled back and forth, so I think most people wouldnt be able to distinguish at reasonably high bitrates. Overall, well worth the fifty bucks for the speed and to be able to properly manage batch processing, IF AND ONLY IF you have one of the supported systems for hardware acceleration.

metkat_meanie about Compressor