Freebies | H.264 Droplet

Posted in News on April 6, 2011 at 11:26 am

You’ve shot, edited and graded your masterpiece – now it’s time to share it with the world. However, if you try to export and upload it to youtube, you’ll get an error. Why?

Final Cut Pro exports your timeline using the same codec your footage was shot and edited in – usually, ProRes for Canon DSLR’s. However, these high quality edits can produce massive file sizes, much too large for viewing online. You need to compress your video.

Fortunately, if you have Final Cut Studio, then you also have Compressor, Apple’s excellent solution to solve all of your transcoding and conversion needs.

There’s a neat feature inside Compressor that lets you create a droplet – or, simply, a drag-and-drop script that enables you to perform sometimes complex automated tasks with a simple interaction.

I’ve created a droplet to convert a video exported from Final Cut to an HD video (1920×1080) using the H.264 compression codec. All you need to do is drag your video file on top of the script icon in your finder and Compressor will do the rest. Your newly converted file will appear in the same folder that your video is located. (Note: you must have Compressor installed for this droplet to work.)

More to come. Enjoy!

MOV to H264 Droplet (Mac only)