Apple Pro Training Series: Compressor 3.5

Chapter 10. Compressionist’s Cheat Sheet

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• Three basic rules of compression

• Encoding tips and techniques

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Compressor is to encoding what Final Cut Pro is to editing, meaning that the underlying skills are learned separately from the software used to perform them. While Compressor makes encoding accessible to all, behind its interface lies intense codec engineering and mathematics that generally fall into a “dark arts” category where few tread and even fewer seek any level of mastery. Although you can produce excellent results by mastering Compressor as an application, a deeper understanding of compression technology and technique is essential to becoming an encoding expert.

Although encoding can be a ...