Re: Compressor versus QT Conversion

It's possible that you have an option turned on (or off) in compressor that is not allowing a good encoding. It's possible that creating your full size QT file straight from FCP is not being done correctly.

Because there are more features and settings in Compressor, there are more ways you can mess up your encode but it is pretty hard to mess it up in Compressor.

Here are a couple of Compressor tips which you may already know:
Make sure that your frame controls are turned on and output is set to progressive to deinterlace. Make sure your frame controls are active when resizing - use better or best (best takes forever, better is 98? as good).

For optimal quality you will do both of these processes as separate steps using ProRes as your intermediate codec. This will leave you with large files but the quality you get will be better than a quicktime conversion.

Suggested Workflow:
Quicktime Reference file (Export as Quicktime) -> Deinterlace -> Resize -> output to h.264. Long process but it is the best way to process video.

Makes sense?
Good luck.