Nice review, Walter!
Server is only necessary for the Telestream products. The fact is that you might see some real benefit by throwing a beast like the ONE at those products, but as Michael points out, there are other options.
FFmpeg is not only free as Michael notes, but also significantly faster than Compressor.
Do you remember ProCoder? This was considered a worthy alternative to Cleaner back in the day, and is now owned by Harmonic. You can use it to encode to any ProRes format directly from your Premiere timeline. No muss, no fuss.
I agree with Michael, though -- there are good, even free, ways to encode to ProRes on Windows, proven in pro workflows. Whatever else factors into someone's decision to add Windows into their shop, hesitation over ProRes encoding shouldn't be one of them.
Tim Wilson
Associate Publisher, Editor-in-Chief
Creative COW Magazine
Twitter: timdoubleyou
