Final Cut Pro 6 and Compressor Problems Resolved!

I recently received a new Mac Tower here at work. It replaced an older Mac G5 Power PC that was definitely showing its age. As with all computers you develop preferences on applications as you work. These preferences allow you to work more efficiently by recording your preferred method of getting things done. In my case they turned out to be a huge headache.

When I got my new Mac I loaded Final Cut Studio 2 and copied over all of the preferences for the applications. The first problem occurred when I tried to render a FCP sequence using Compressor. Due to the imported preference files, Compressor wouldn't recognize the new computer as a location to render to. That is very bad.

The way I finally got both FCP and Compressor to work harmoniously together was to de-install both applications entirely- every single preference and accompanying file. I used AppCleaner from Free Mac Soft to easily delete all the corrupt junk. I then reloaded FCP and Compressor and then did a software update to bring them up to the current version.

Apple Compressor Settings for compressing NTSC Video For YouTube

I have found that video compression is a subtle craft, a most demanding mix of art and science. Too much compression and your video looks like a glitchy, pixelated mess. Too little and playback halts and the video freezes. It's hard to tell which is worse. To me bad video is bad video.

Finding the right settings for a given piece of video is extremely difficult. There are many parameters that can effect video compression. This leads to endless tweaking of compression settings by video professionals. In all there is no holy grail of video compression, every medium requires tweaking to get it right. I have been looking for the ultimate video compression scheme for YouTube for a few years now. I finally found a reasonably good scheme from none other than YouTube itself.



Create a new Custom Setting and select QuickTime Movie.

Click on the Video: Settings button to bring up the following pop-up screen.

Select H.264 as the Compression Type.

Set the Frame Rate to 30 fps the Key Frames to Automatic and uncheck Frame Reordering.

Lastly under the Geometry set the Frame Size to 720x480 and your done.

Check out this video to get a look at how well these settings work. Tell me what you think. Add a comment below.