[ This article was first published in the September, 2005, issue of
Larry’s Final Cut Pro Newsletter. Click here to subscribe. ]
One of the advantages of using Compressor to create your MPEG-2 files for DVD Studio Pro is that once you have your settings the way you want them, you don’t need to change them, just reuse them — over and over.
And a very fast way to do this is to create a droplet, which appears as an icon on your desktop.
Here’s how:
1. Open Compressor.
2. Go to the Presets window.
3. Select the Preset you want to turn into a droplet — in this case, it’s Larry’s Great Preset in the My DVD presets folder.
4. Click the middle icon of the three at the top of the window. This allows you to save your setting as a droplet.
5. In this dialog, tell Compressor where to save the droplet — I generally keep them on my desktop. And where you want the compressed files to go — I find it best to compress files to my second drive.
6. Click OK and the droplet icon shows up on your desktop (or where ever you decided to save it.
7. When you drop a video file on top of the droplet, you don’t even have to open Compressor. A dialog appears telling you things are getting ready.
8. Then, you confirm whether you want to make any changes to the preset.
9. When you click Submit, your file is compressed while you go about your everyday work. No muss, no fuss.
And, when it comes to compression, once I have my settings the way I want them, I want to compress a files as fast and painlessly as possible.
