In this week’s Media Composer 101 tutorial, Kevin P McAuliffe will show you that no matter what compression application you have, whether it Sorenson Squeeze, Adobe’s Media Encoder or even Apple’s Compressor, with a little forethought, you will be creating your M2V and AC3 files, lightning quick!

When an editor tackles the murky waters of getting his 4K, 2K or UHD timeline down to an SD version – ready to export – making the right steps in the compression process to M2V and AC3 files is critical.   There are basically three main programs you’ll be using to compress your files.  Adobe’s Media Encoder, Sorenson Squeeze and Apple’s Compressor.  Anyone who has a Creative Cloud license has access to Media Encoder.  Most Avid Media Composer editors have access to some version of Sorenson Squeeze (the lite version is included in your Media Composer subscription license), and for $50, Mac users can have access to Compressor, a fantastic, basic application for streaming files for DVD and other Mac devices.  Which one is the best, you might ask?  To be honest, as you’ll see in the tutorial, the process is pretty similar, no matter which application you are using.  They all give you an almost identical end result.  When you’re done watching this tutorial, you will have two files.  An M2V file for your video and an AC3 file for your audio.  In our final lesson, we’ll take a look at creating the actual DVD.

To keep up to speed when new tutorials are released, follow Kevin on Twitter @kpmcauliffe, send him an e-mail at [email protected], or subscribe to the YouTube Channel at www.youtube.com/user/MediaComposer101 .