Compressor is a video and audio media
compression and encoding application for
macOS
macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...
made by
Apple
An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...
.
History
The application used to be available as part of
Final Cut Pro,
Soundtrack Pro,
Motion
In physics, motion is when an object changes its position with respect to a reference point in a given time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed, and frame of reference to an o ...
, and
DVD Studio Pro, and after Apple combined its professional media products into
Final Cut Studio and
Logic Studio bundles, Compressor became part of these bundles.
Once the bundle model was abandoned by Apple in 2011, a new major version of Compressor (Compressor 4) was released as a separate product on the
Mac App Store
The Mac App Store (also known as the App Store) is a digital distribution platform for macOS apps, often referred to as Mac apps, created and maintained by Apple. The platform was announced on October 20, 2010, at Apple's "Back to the Mac" eve ...
for $49.99.
Features
Compressor is used for encoding video and audio media in multiple formats, including
HEVC
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In co ...
(H.265), MPEG-1,
MPEG-2 for
DVD, QuickTime .mov, MPEG-4 (Simple Profile), MPEG-4 H.264 and optional (third Party and often commercial) QuickTime Exporter Components to export to Windows Media. Among its other features are the ability to convert from
NTSC
NTSC (from National Television System Committee) is the first American standard for analog television, published and adopted in 1941. In 1961, it was assigned the designation System M. It is also known as EIA standard 170.
In 1953, a second ...
to
PAL and vice versa, and the ability to upscale from
standard-definition video to
high-definition video with feature detail detection to prevent serious quality losses. Filters and effects, such as
de-noising or timestamp generation, can be applied to video during the conversion process, and the video can be cropped.
Compressor could be used with the discontinued
Qmaster
Apple Qmaster is a system made by Apple Inc. that provides automation, automated work distribution and processing for high-volume projects created with certain Visual effects, digital visual effects software packages: Shake (software), Shake, May ...
for
clustering, or configured as a server to work on the jobs submitted by other computers on the
network.
With its update to 4.2 in April 2015, Apple added performance upgrades, as well as the ability to use Compressor to produce a compliant package to submit video content for distribution to the
iTunes Store.
Compressor supports creating files for
Blu-ray
Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of high-defin ...
discs.
References
External links and references
Apple Compressor 4Apple Compressor 2 User Manual(PDF)
New Features in Compressor 2(PDF)
{{mac-software-stub
MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc.