Tutorial: H.264 Encoding in Apple Compressor and Adobe Media Encoder

Saving a New Custom Preset

Now we’ve set our parameters. If you want to save the parameters you’ve chosen for a given clip as a preset, click the Save Preset button shown in Figure 17. The Choose Name dialog opens, and there you can name your new preset. Then next time you want to encode to these parameters, or any other saved custom presets, all custom presets will appear above the presets that come with the product itself.

Figure 17. Selecting Save Preset to the right of the Preset field in the Encode Settings window

Apple Compressor 4

So, compared to Apple Compressor 4—the version of Compressor that became available the same week as Final Cut Pro X—Adobe Media Encoder is a lot easier to use. As you can see Compressor uses different interfaces for mobile and desktop encoding (Figure 18, below). It doesn’t support the high profile, and it makes you work through three different screens to set your video encoding parameters.

Figure 18. Apple Compressor 4

Compressor is also slower than the Adobe Media Encoder. It encoded our test file in 7 minutes and 10 seconds compared to the Adobe Media Encoder, which produced the same file in 4 minutes and 17 seconds. Compressor's quality is also much lower, as you can see in the side-by-side comparisons in Figure 19 (below) and 20 (below).

Figures 19 and 20. Two side-by-side comparisons of encoded video quality in Apple Compressor and Adobe Media Encoder

Even in this low motion video footage you can see that there’s slightly more detail in the images on the right, and in the second set of images you can also see the start of fading in the shirt in the Compressor footage.

In the higher-motion clips shown in Figure 21 (below), again in the Compressor footage you see loss of detail, you see no pinstripes in the image on the left (Compressor) while they’re obvious in the image on the right (Adobe Media Encoder), and you’re starting to see a lot of fading in the Compressor footage.

Figure 21. Higher-motion footage comparison

As we get into higher- and higher-motion video, such as the footage that yielded the screenshots in Figures 22 and 23 (below), you’re going to see even more evidence of that. You see much more detail in the face in the Adobe Media Encoder version than the Compressor version, much more detail, and very usable quality for the Adobe Media Encoder where the image is obviously faded with almost complete loss of detail for Compressor.

Figures 22 and 23. High-motion ballet footage comparison

So now you know how to choose and customize H.264-related presets in the Adobe Media Encoder. You’ve also seen that Adobe Media Encoder is faster and produces higher-quality output than Apple Compressor 4.