Check your settings carefully

I’ve used Compressor for years and loved it more and more with each passing upgrade. This most recent version has soured me to the point that I need to speak up.

The new version of compressor features some welcome upgrades, but a lot of them are not rooted in the reality of what most video editors are dealing with on a a day to day basis. Take the new color management tool. Not a bad idea in theory, but in practice the constraint in options leaves it virtually useless for most work. Rec709 to Rec2020? No one needs that and if they do they’re not using compressor for their color work. How about Rec709 Legal Range to Rec709 Full Range? Or 2.4 to 2.2 gamma shifts?

The biggest problem I see is that the automatic settings are getting too unwieldy. Gone are the days I can just drop a video in, apply a preset and walk away. I have on more than one occassion seen Compressor select 1-2-1 for the source color profile and completely decimate the color grade of something I’ve been encoding. There’s 5 hours down the drain. Or more recently when I dropped a widescreen (2048x858) video file into Compressor for conversion to Blu-Ray. Prior to this most recent release Compressor would have selected 1080P as my output setting by default. Only after delivery to my client did I fine that in the most recent version of Compressor, the software has determined that 720P would be a much better setting.

Clickboxes now fade up and down in the interface. I’m nearly at a loss for how terrible a UX decision this is. I need to work fast. The UI needs to be responsive. Period.

Compressor has been a huge time saver in the past, but now I feel I have to watch it like a two year-old.

scythefalcon about Compressor, v4.3