Apple Final Cut Pro 7 - Manual (Page 1795)

Using Compressor as a Standalone Application
You can use Compressor as a standalone encoding application to submit QuickTime
movie files at any time, regardless of whether Final Cut Pro is opened.
When Should You Use Compressor as a Standalone Application?
If you want to continue using Final Cut Pro while Compressor is encoding, you can export
your Final Cut Pro clips and sequences to QuickTime movies and then submit them to
Compressor. The disadvantage of this method is that you must make an intermediate
copy of your movie. This requires extra time and, if you’re not careful, the additional
QuickTime processing step may cause some generational loss.
You can also use Compressor as a standalone application to transcode a source clip from
one standard or format to another before adding the clip to the Final Cut Pro sequence.
For example, if you want to convert a PAL clip to NTSC, you could do this directly in
Compressor without involving Final Cut Pro.
Using QuickTime Reference Movies
To use Compressor as a standalone application, you need to create QuickTime movie files
to submit to Compressor. For example, suppose you are working on a one-hour DV project
in Final Cut Pro that you want to encode to MPEG-2 for DVD authoring. Before you can
use Compressor, you need to export the entire one-hour sequence to a temporary
QuickTime movie file that you can then submit to Compressor. This temporary file takes
a lot of unnecessary disk space, so an alternative is to export a QuickTime reference movie.
QuickTime reference movies appear the same as standard QuickTime movies, but they
often take less disk space because the video track actually refers to your sequence’s
original media files when possible. The only time media is actually stored in a QuickTime
reference movie is during segments where rendering is required. Compressor processes
a QuickTime reference movie in the same way as a standalone QuickTime movie that
contains all of its media within its own video track. Exporting to QuickTime movies always
takes longer if rendering is required, but you still spare Final Cut Pro from the
time-consuming MPEG-2 compression phase.
Important: QuickTime reference movies are useful for temporary use on your local system,
but be careful not to send these movies to remote systems that don’t have all the required
media.
Creating Encoding Jobs in Compressor
To add a QuickTime movie to the Compressor encoding queue, you need to create an
encoding job. An encoding job contains a single source media file and settings for one or
more output files.
1795 Chapter 108 Using Compressor with Final Cut Pro