What software is needed for video rendering on the Mac?
 

Hi guys. Looking into switching over to the Mac and FCP. Was wondering what software is normally used to render to various formats? I understand that with FCP, you need to render out a Quicktime in DV (If that's what you were working in) and then use another compressor to encode to your final output. Is this correct? I assume Quicktime Pro will do Quicktime formats but what if I want to encode WMV, or say MPG2. I mainly do DVD's and web delivery in the standard formats (.mov, .wmv)

Cheers
Aaron

Compressor comes with FCP5.
To compress into wmv, see flip4mac.com

Yes, I don't know that you would need anything beyond the wmv tool that Cemil mentions. FCP includes Quicktime Pro and Compressor. They include a lot of codecs. You might also look at Sorenson for web video, although I don't do that myself so I don't have personal experience:

http://www.sorensonmedia.com/

But as long as you're working in DV or HDV you just need to use the correct project settings when you start, then you simply save the file in that format without ever leaving FCP.

Oh, that's even better news! Thanks again - now just figuring out how much I can sell my old PC and Mac Mini for ;)

For MPEG-2 you can look at BitVice, MainConcept or Digigami. For web formats, Squeeze is popular, and some people still use Cleaner even though it hasn't been updated forever. I have heard mixed reviews of Flip4Mac. The one Mac editor I know who delivers lots of Windows Media actually got a new PC in part to do his WMV encoding. But you will find plenty of tools for everything else on the Mac.

Once you have FCP installed on the Mac, you're basically ready to work in any format you want with a few exceptions, .wmv being one of them.

I opted for the popwire .wmv plug in which works from any QT based product. It's only $29.00. Real and Macromedia both offer free plugins for exporting to Real Player and Flash video.

I use BitVice for MPEG 2 encoding.