Compressor

The first new software that has been introduced to us this year was Compressor, which was easy to use and important to know.

Compressor is a video and audio media compression and encoding application for use with Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio on Mac OS X. It can be used with Qmaster for clustering.

The application used to be available as part of Final Cut Pro, Soundtrack Pro, Motion, and DVD Studio Pro, but after those stand-alone products were discontinued, it became available as part of Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio.

With the release of Final Cut Pro X and Motion 5, Compressor was upgraded to version 4 and is available to purchase separately on the Mac App Store for $49.99.

Compressor is used for encoding MPEG-1, MPEG-2 for DVD, QuickTime .mov, MPEG-4 (Simple Profile), MPEG-4 H.264 and optional (third Party and often commercial) QuickTime Exporter Components to export to Windows Media, for example. Among its other features is the ability to convert from NTSC to PAL and vice versa, and the ability to 'upconvert' from Standard Definition video to High Definition video with feature detail detection to prevent serious quality losses.

Compressor is mainly used to encode Final Cut Pro projects into the necessary DVD MPEG-2 format. Filters can be applied to video during the conversion process, and the video can be cropped.