Example: Convert to 24p HD

Example: Convert NTSC or PAL footage to 24p HD

Compressor is capable of extremely high-quality frame rate and frame size conversions that are superior to the processing that occurs when simply combining different footage in a single project in Final Cut Pro X. Use Compressor to convert your source files to ensure the highest possible quality.

Create a setting that converts footage from multiple rates and frame sizes to a uniform rate and size

  1. In the Settings pane, choose New Setting from the Add pop-up menu .

  2. In the dialog that appears, choose QuickTime Movie from the Format pop-up menu, type “Convert to 24p HD” in the Name field, type “Converts any file to 1080/24p” in the Description field, then click OK.

    The new “Convert to 24p HD” setting appears in the Custom area of the Settings pane, and the General inspector displays the basic properties for the setting. (If the inspector pane is not visible, click the Inspector button in the upper-right corner of the Compressor window.)

  3. In the inspector pane, click Video to open to the Video inspector.

  4. In the Video Properties area, set the following values:

    • Frame size: 1920 x 1080

    • Pixel aspect ratio: Square

    • Frame rate: 23.976

    • Field order: Progressive

  5. In the Cropping & Padding area, choose Preserve Source Aspect Ratio from the Padding pop-up menu.

  6. In the Quality area, set the following values:

    • Resize filter: Best (Statistical Prediction)

    • Retiming quality: Best (Motion Compensated)

    • Adaptive details: Select this checkbox.

      Note: By setting these properties to the values described, transcoding may take significantly longer than if you use the “Better” settings. You might choose to experiment with some sample files and judge for yourself if you think the quality improvement is worth the extra transcoding time.

You can apply this custom setting to any type of source footage (any frame rate or size), and the output will always be a 1080p HD file.

Note: The ultimate quality of the resulting files will be highly dependent on the format and quality of your source footage.