4.5
Table Of Contents
- Contents
- What’s new
- Compressor basics
- Simple transcoding
- Advanced adjustments
- Intro to advanced adjustments in Compressor
- Work with settings
- View and modify a setting’s properties in Compressor
- Create custom settings in Compressor
- Formats and settings in Compressor
- Properties of settings
- Apple Devices settings in Compressor
- Common Audio Formats settings in Compressor
- Dolby Digital settings in Compressor
- H.264 for Blu-ray setting in Compressor
- Image Sequence settings in Compressor
- MP3 settings in Compressor
- MPEG-2 setting in Compressor
- MPEG-4 settings in Compressor
- MXF settings in Compressor
- QuickTime Export Components setting in Compressor
- QuickTime Movie settings in Compressor
- Work with destinations
- Work with locations in Compressor
- Work with jobs
- Work with batches in Compressor
- Advanced tasks
- Import an image sequence in Compressor
- Work with surround sound files
- Work with 360-degree video
- Work with captions
- Create iTunes Store packages
- Create IMF packages
- Modify frame size
- Modify playback speed
- View and modify audio tracks in Compressor
- Add video and audio effects
- Work with metadata annotations in Compressor
- Add descriptive audio tracks in Compressor
- Set a poster frame in Compressor
- Add markers using Compressor
- Transcode time ranges in Compressor
- Modify starting timecode in Compressor
- Work smarter
- Compressor preferences
- Keyboard shortcuts
- Wide color gamut and HDR
- Create and use droplets in Compressor
- Create additional instances of Compressor
- Transcode Final Cut Pro and Motion projects in Compressor
- Use distributed processing
- Glossary
36Compressor User Guide
• Lanczos 2: Adjacent pixel values are averaged using a truncated sinc function. This
option is slower than Gaussian but provides sharper results.
• Lanczos 3: Similar to Lanczos 2 but averages more pixel values. This option is slower
than Lanczos 2 but may produce better results.
• Bicubic: Adjacent pixel values are averaged using a bicubic function. The processing
time and output are most similar to Lanczos 2 and Lanczos 3.
• Anti-aliased (Best): Provides the highest output quality, but can take substantially
longer to process.
• Retiming Quality: This pop-up menu sets the retiming method. There are four options:
• Fast (Nearest Frame): Linearly interpolates frames using nearest neighbor frames.
• Good (Frame Blending): Blends neighboring frames using a filter to produce good-
quality interpolation.
• Best (Motion Compensated): Uses optical flow to interpolate using areas of
movement between neighboring frames to produce high-quality output.
• Reverse Telecine: Removes the extra fields added during the telecine process to
convert the film’s 24 fps to NTSC’s 29.97 fps. Choosing this item disables all the
other Quality controls. See Use reverse telecine in Compressor.
• Adaptive details: Select this checkbox to use advanced image analysis to distinguish
between noise and edge areas during output.
• Anti-aliasing level: Sets the softness level in the output image. Double-click the value
and then manually enter a new value or drag the slider to the right to increase softness.
This property improves the quality of conversions when you’re scaling media up. For
example, when transcoding SD video to HD, anti-aliasing smooths jagged edges that
might appear in the image.
• Details level: Sets the amount of detail in the output image. Double-click the value and
then manually enter a new value or drag the slider to set the value. This sharpening
control lets you add detail back to an image being enlarged. Unlike other sharpening
operations, the “Details level” property distinguishes between noise and feature details,
and generally doesn’t increase unwanted grain. Increasing this value may introduce
jagged edges, however, which can be eliminated by increasing the “Anti-aliasing level”
slider.
• Dithering: When selected, adds a certain type of noise to images to prevent large-scale
distracting patterns such as color banding. If your image has excessive noise after
rendering, deselect this checkbox.
Video effects
For a list of available video effects and instructions on how to add a video effect to a
setting, see Add and remove effects in Compressor.
Audio properties
• Channel layout: Use the pop-up menu to set the audio channel layout.
• Sample rate: Use this pop-up menu to set the number of times per second that music
waveforms (samples) are captured digitally. The higher the sample rate, the higher the
audio quality and the larger the file size.
• Quality: Use this pop-up menu to select the quality of the audio output.










