I know this might be too vague, but I'd like to know what kind of compression times you guys get preferably for vimeo standards using fcp 6 and compressor:

Audio Encoder
AAC, Stereo (L R), 44.100 kHz
Video Encoder
Format: QT
Width: 1280
Height: 720
Pixel aspect ratio: Square
Crop: None
Padding: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Frame Controls On:
Retiming: (Fast) Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Linear Filter
Deinterlace Filter: Better (Motion Adaptive)
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Progressive
Codec Type: H.264
Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 75
Min. Spatial quality: 25
Key frame interval: 30
Temporal quality: 50
Min. temporal quality: 25
Average data rate: 5.12 (Mbps)


I edit/compress with a macbook pro 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo w/ 2 gigs of ram GeForce 8600M GT 512MB and it takes around 3-4hrs for 7 mins of footage with a minimal amount of transitions/effects. I want to find better ways (faster) to do renders/compression and wonder if these compression rates are standard or if there is a slow in compression due to heat on the gfx card and cpu. I am looking into getting a new computer either the iMac or Macpro and would like to see what kind of rates you guys get with your setups. Thanks

MacPro 8 Core with Matrox CompressHD card. Faster than real time. 90 minute video takes around 80 minutes and it looks good too.

MacBookPro with Matrox MXO2-LE with MAX. About 30% faster than MacPro 8 Core with QMaster 8 Instances.

If speed is important it's the best investment you can make.

It needs PCIe for desktop and Express slot for laptop so an iMac is out of the question.

I found my speed tests
MacBookPro early 2008 15" 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo
1080p30 EX codec to 720p30 5000kbps for Vimeo
Source 10 minutes 58 seconds. Time to encode 17 minutes with MXO2-LE with MAX.

Same file on MacPro 8 Core 2.8GHz with CompressHD(MAX) 8 minutes 40 seconds.

Note though this is for a rendered source file encoding to H.264 for Vimeo.

When in FCP set your timeline renders to Apple ProRes even if timeline codec is EX.

have you tried without the MXO2-LE on the MBP? I'm wondering if my graphics card is dying or is the macpro just that much more powerful? 3-4hrs seems a lot with the setup I have.