Example: Create dailies

Example: Create daily review copies of footage

Many multi-day video productions create copies of each day’s footage for distribution to producers, clients, executives, and others. These clips are called “dailies” or “rushes.” The priority is to rush to get them done quickly and then notify the recipients that they are available to watch.

This example will show how to use Compressor to generate such review copies for a variety of distribution methods. The concepts presented here can be applied to creating destinations for many other workflows.

Note: The steps in the tasks below assume you are working with HD source footage.

Create dailies to be hosted on a private server

To create files to be stored on an internal server, or to be uploaded to a web server, follow the steps below.

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

  2. In the dialog that appears, do the following:

    1. Expand the Video Sharing Services group and select Large 540p.

      Note: Alternatively, you can choose one of the other settings in this group based on the bandwidth of the server where you will be hosting the video.

    2. Choose Send Email from the “Job action” pop-up menu.

    3. In the Name field, type “Dailies output.”

    4. In the Description field, type “540p output for daily review.”

    5. Click OK.

    The custom destination is added to the Settings pane.

  3. Click Locations to open the Locations pane, then click the Add button .

  4. In the window that appears, select the folder where you want the video files to be saved, then click Choose.

    Tip: To avoid unnecessary copying or duplicating of files, select the folder directly on the server where the videos can be accessed by the intended recipients as soon as transcoding is complete.

    The new location is added to the Custom section of the Locations pane.

    Note: If you’re uploading to a folder on a web server, you may need to perform additional steps (such as setting up a script or building an HTML page) to make the videos accessible in a web browser. Consult your webmaster if you have questions.

  5. When you’re ready to generate your dailies, Choose File > Add File (or press Command-I).

  6. In the window that appears, navigate to the folder containing the day’s footage, select the file or files you want to transcode, then click Add.

    Each clip is added as a separate job to the batch area.

    Tip: You can also drag files from the Finder into the batch area.

  7. Select all the jobs in the batch area, and from the Settings pane, drag the Dailies Output destination onto any of the jobs.

    Dragging to any one of the jobs applies the destination to all selected jobs in the batch area.

  8. Switch to the Locations pane and drag the custom location you created in step 4 onto any of the selected jobs in the batch area.

    The location is added to all selected jobs.

  9. Select the first job in the batch area and, in the Action area of the Job inspector, fill in the email To, Subject, and Message fields.

    If the inspector pane is not showing, click the Inspector button in the upper-right corner of the Compressor window. You can enter multiple email addresses in the To field, as long as each address is separated by a comma. Also, be sure to include a link to the location of the saved files in the Message field.

  10. Select each of the subsequent jobs and repeat step 9, until each job’s Action section in the Job inspector is filled out completely.

  11. Click Start Batch (or press Command-B).

    Tip: If you’re transcoding many files to be saved in one location, consider only sending an email when the last file is completed. That way your recipients won’t receive an email for each completed file. To prevent emails from being sent, set the Job Action pop-up menu to Do Nothing for all but the last job in the batch area.

Create dailies to be hosted on a third-party website

Some productions may prefer to use a public video-sharing service like YouTube, Vimeo, or others to host their dailies.

The built-in destinations in Compressor are designed to automatically upload to some of these sites. However, other sites require creating a custom destination. This example uses a popular Chinese video-sharing service called Youku. The steps are nearly identical for other video-sharing services.

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

  2. In the dialog that appears, do the following:

    1. Expand the Video Sharing Services group and select HD 720p.

    2. Choose Publishing to Youku from the “Job action” pop-up menu.

    3. In the Name field, type “Publish to Youku.”

    4. In the Description field, type “720p dailies for Youku.”

    5. Click OK.

    The custom destination is added to the Settings pane.

  3. When you’re ready to generate your dailies, Choose File > Add File (or press Command-I).

  4. In the window that appears, navigate to the folder containing the day’s footage, select the file or files you want to transcode, then click Add.

    Each clip is added as a separate job to the batch area.

    Tip: You can also drag files from the Finder into the batch area.

  5. Select all the jobs in the batch area, and from the Settings pane, drag the Publish to Youku destination onto any of the jobs.

    Dragging to any one of the jobs applies the destination to all selected jobs in the batch area.

    Because Compressor automatically uploads the transcoded files to the video-sharing website (Youku, in this example), the save location specified in the output row of each job is not important. For this reason, you can leave the Location set to its default (Source) and then manually delete the transcoded files on your computer after the jobs are completed.

  6. Select the first job in the batch area, and, in the Action area of the Job inspector, enter your account information for the video-sharing service, as well as other details about the video clip (such as title, description, and whether the uploaded file should be stored as private or public).

  7. Select each of the subsequent jobs and repeat step 6, until each job’s Action section in the Job inspector is filled out.

  8. Click Start Batch (or press Command-B) to begin transcoding.

    Note: In this workflow, Compressor can’t automatically send an email to notify the recipients that the files are available, so you’ll have to do that manually after the jobs are completed.