General properties of presets in Compressor
When you select a preset, its general properties appear in the General inspector.
Important: Not all properties or options are available for all transcoding jobs. The options shown depend on the type of source media you’re transcoding, the preset’s format, the configuration of other properties, and the hardware and software you’re using.
General property | Preset formats | Description | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Name | All preset formats | Displays the name of the preset. | |||||||||
Description | All preset formats | Displays the description of the preset. | |||||||||
Extension | All preset formats | Displays the extension of the output file. | |||||||||
Allow export segmentation | Apple Devices, Image Sequence, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MXF, QuickTime Movie | Select this checkbox to have Compressor process the output file using a shared computer group. See Transcode batches with multiple computers in Compressor. | |||||||||
Default location | All preset formats | For custom presets, use the pop-up menu to choose a default save location for transcoded files. | |||||||||
Format | Apple Devices, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MXF, QuickTime Movie | Use this pop-up menu to specify whether the output includes video and audio, or video only. For MPEG-2 presets, use this pop-up menu to choose an MPEG-2 stream type:
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Optimize for network use | Apple Devices, MPEG-4, QuickTime Movie | Select this checkbox to create a file that will start playing after only a small portion of the file has been downloaded from the network. | |||||||||
File type/Image type | Common Audio Formats, Dolby Digital, Image Sequence | Choose a file type or image type from the pop-up menu. | |||||||||
Stream usage | H.264, MPEG-2 | For H.264 presets, use the pop-up menu to set whether the output file is transcoded for Blu-ray Disc or AVCHD. For MPEG-2 presets, use this pop-up menu to choose an MPEG-2 stream usage option:
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Color palette | Image Sequence | Use this pop-up menu (available when “Image type” is set to GIF or PNG) to choose the number of colors used in the transcoded files (or choose Not Indexed to use all available colors). Select Local to use a new color palette for each frame, or Global to use a shared color palette across all frames. | |||||||||
Color dithering | Image Sequence | Use this pop-up menu (available when “Image type” is set to GIF or PNG and Color palette is set to a limited number of colors) to choose a dithering algorithm, or no dithering. | |||||||||
Animated | Image Sequence | Select this checkbox (available when “Image type” is set to GIF or PNG) to export a single, animated file containing all frames (rather than a collection of individual files for each frame). | |||||||||
Playback | Image Sequence | When Animated is selected, use these controls to set how many times the animated GIF or PNG loops during playback. | |||||||||
Create unique output directory | Image Sequence | When Animated is not selected, select this checkbox to create a folder to hold the output files; the files saved will be named “frame-0,” “frame-1,” “frame-2,” and so on. | |||||||||
Add leading zeros to frame numbers | Image Sequence | When Animated is not selected, select this checkbox to have Compressor add leading zeros to output filenames (“filename-000000,” “filename-000001,” “filename-000002,” and so on). | |||||||||
Add Apple metadata | MPEG-2 | Select this checkbox to have Compressor include specific MPEG-2 authoring information in the output file. The resulting file will be read faster by other applications. | |||||||||
Include chapter markers only | MPEG-2 | Select this checkbox to include chapter markers, but not unnamed compression markers, in MPEG-2 output. When this checkbox is deselected, all markers are included in the output file. See Add markers in Compressor. | |||||||||
Enhanced podcast | MPEG-4 | Select this checkbox to have Compressor embed podcasting information (annotations, markers, and artwork) into the output media file. See Work with metadata annotations in Compressor and Add markers in Compressor. | |||||||||
The General inspector may also show options for retiming, captions, and metadata.
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