Starting with Compressor

Here is a post for getting started with Compressor. In most cases, you have the software and have no idea what it does or how it could save you a lot of time or you just never learned it. That’s okay. I am surprised how many people use Final Cut Studio, but don’t take advantage of this huge timesaver. The best part about FCP7, to me, is that you can render using compressor in the background while you continue to edit in Final Cut Pro.

However, for this post, let’s talk about getting started. You have an AVI or MPEG file and you want to make it editable in Final Cut Pro.

Open Compressor.

Embarrassed of Edits

Have you ever cut something you are embarrassed to watch again? Do you feel sorrow everytime you hear the music cue on the television/youtube?

I once cut a piece for someone and was completely disgusted with how it turned out. I was booked on to another show and left the first job (ran out of budget) for another. The director proceeded to finish the rest of the show by themselves. I didn’t really want to leave the show because I like to see how projects go until the end. I was told we were about 95% done when I left  so I wasn’t too concerned.

I showed up to the viewing.

Experiment: Adobe Soundbooth + Avid Script Sync

So I tried it. I’ve read all about it on people’s twitter accounts, forums, blogs, etc, but I had never tried it or seen anything actually do it. In theory it should all work fine right?

Here is what I did:

Take a clip from your project, export an aiff of the clip. You will probably be working in Avid just because you are going to take it back into Avid to use the Script sync feature. In this case I was editing a non-scripted interview of NHL Analyst Brian Engblom for HockeyPlayer.com. I took a clip that was close to a minute in length just for this test.

2 visitors online now
1 guests, 1 bots, 0 members
Max visitors today: 9 at 12:16 am UTC
This month: 143 at 04-01-2026 06:15 pm UTC
This year: 145 at 03-14-2026 05:09 am UTC
All time: 415 at 12-28-2022 05:13 pm UTC