Compressor (software)

Compressor

Developer(s)	Apple Inc.
Stable release	4.0.1 / September 20, 2011; 51 days ago (2011-09-20)
Operating system	Mac OS X v10.6.7 or later
Type	Data compression
License	Proprietary
Website	apple.com/finalcutpro/compressor

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.

History

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 is became available as part of Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio.

With the release of Final Cut X, Compressor was upgraded to version 4 and is once again available separately.

Features

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.

External links and references

• Apple Compressor 4
• Apple Compressor 2 User Manual (PDF)
• New Features in Compressor 2 (PDF)