If you have begun to explore Final Cut Studio’s application integration by embedding your Motion project files into your Final Cut Pro sequence, you may have noticed a rather large increase in render time for that sequence.

Part of the cause of the increased render time is due to the level of complexity of your Motion project, but there’s a setting in Final Cut Pro that can dramatically reduce render times with little to no impact on the quality of your Motion project—except for certain types of projects.

Cinema Craft, the industry leader in MPEG-2 encoding for DVD, is going to release a Compressor 3 plug-in by the end of this month. I wrote an article on Ken Stone’s site that takes a look at both the plug-in itself and the technology behind it…the Cinema Craft Xtream encoding engine. The majority of Hollywood releases on DVD have been encoded using the Xtream engine, and it’s the same engine that’s at the core of the Cinema Craft Encoder MP plug-in for Compressor.

In addition to high quality, Cinema Craft Encoder MP is a full Compressor plug-in (vs. a QuickTime Component) so it has access to all of Compressor’s features like frame controls and geometry.

If you’re going to be in Los Angeles on May 21st, 2008, I’m going to do a demo of the software at the May LAFCPUG meeting.

BG