MpegStreamclip vs. Quicktime?

[Ryan Mueller]

I was just wondering what the advantage is to transcoding to ProRes via MpegStreamClip vs. Quicktime? Is it a speed issue? Sorry if this has been covered before, but I don't remember seeing any details as to why people are using it.

[Steve Maller]

Originally Posted by Ryan Mueller

I was just wondering what the advantage is to transcoding to ProRes via MpegStreamClip vs. Quicktime? Is it a speed issue? Sorry if this has been covered before, but I don't remember seeing any details as to why people are using it.

If you're transcoding into ProRes, I believe that MPEGStreamclip uses the Quicktime codec, anyway, so there's little difference. The main difference is that you don't need quicktime pro or Final Cut or Compressor to do batch processing in MPEGStreamclip. Other than that, I believe the performance and quality are identical.

[Ryan Mueller]

Thank you for the input! I figured as much, but just wasn't sure. Actually I meant Compressor instead of Quicktime, whoops! LOL, it's easier to batch transcode clips in Compressor.

[John Benton]

I believe mPegStreamclip is a bit faster than Compressor

[Ryan Mueller]

Originally Posted by John Benton

I believe mPegStreamclip is a bit faster than Compressor

Thanks Jon! Be worth looking into if it were faster. Can anyone verify this? If so, roughly how much faster?

[Matthew Ebenezer]

Hey Ryan,

Do you have compressor? If so, I'd suggest downloading MpegStreamClip (it's free) and do a few tests.

I've previously been using Compressor but downloaded MpegStreamClip over the weekend for some testing. So far I've been quite happy with it.

Compressor has been giving me some problems when I try to convert more than 30 clips at once. Last night I used MpegStreamClip to convert a few hundred files and it work perfectly.

That's my experience so far. The next test I'll be doing is a 30p to 25p conversion test - both for quality and speed.

Cheers,

Matthew.

[Nigel Barker]

I did a quick comparison on a single 500GB 3 minute clip on my 8-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro & was surprised to find that MPEG Streamclip is indeed a bit faster as it converted to ProRes in just about three minutes while Compressor took about 30 seconds longer.

Using Qmaster it is possible to set up Compressor batch jobs that share the processing over some/all of the other Macs on your LAN. I haven't used this much as my wife complained about her Mac Pro slowing down too much as soon as I started a batch job. There is the potential for Compressor to be faster than MPEG Streamclip in this instance.

[Nigel Barker]

Originally Posted by Matthew Ebenezer

Compressor has been giving me some problems when I try to convert more than 30 clips at once. Last night I used MpegStreamClip to convert a few hundred files and it work perfectly.

That is interesting as if I add more than 20 odd clips into a single Compressor batch job then Compressor crashes. It looks like using MPEG Streamclip may be a useful alternative.

[Evan Donn]

The batch processing is the thing with MPEGStreamclip. I just finished a 48 hour film project yesterday, and we definitely saved time by keeping a macbook open with a batch list running so that every break we could just drag the newest clips into the list, hit 'ok' to accept all the previously used settings and then move on, everything was converted by the end of the shoot. Once it's set up it's so simple we didn't really need to have a dedicated person responsible for the process.

For me it's also the only way to avoid the crushed blacks issue - I know the quicktime update fixed it for most people, but for whatever reason on my system going straight through quicktime (i.e. using compressor or exporting from final cut) still clips the blacks, but converting via MPEGstreamclip first avoids the problem. I probably just need to do a clean OS install but until I get time for that this workflow works for me.