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Once you've set all your processing and compression parameters, compressing the movie is easy, but time consuming. Depending on your settings (particularly the codec), and your processor speed, compression can take up to several seconds per frame of your movie.
NOTE: Media Cleaner Pro is
multi-processor compatible to help speed up the
compression process. All of Media Cleaner's filters and
image adjustments make full use of your multi-processor machine. However, many of
the current codecs don't take full (or any) advantage of multi-processor computers, so the
speed increase with an MP machine may not be as great as you would expect.
Once you move the mouse, Media Cleaner will temporarily pause compression and turn the cursor back into an arrow. Depending on several factors (such as your processor speed), it may take a few seconds to return to the arrow cursor, because Media Cleaner must first finish compressing the current frame.
As long as the arrow cursor is visible,
compression is temporarily paused and you may move
windows around, go to the Finder, etc. Once you leave the mouse idle for a few seconds,
Media Cleaner will resume the compression process, and again "take over" your CPU.
If you click on the toggle, the status line
will expand to show you details on the amount of
the original movie written and remaining to be written, as well as minutes of material which
have been compressed and are remaining. Times
refer to the running time of the movie, not the
time remaining to finish the compression. Clicking on
the toggle a second time will "close up" this section.
At any time during the compression process (except flattening), you can suspend your compression, then later resume the compression from where you stopped, rather than having to start over.
Media Cleaner's Suspend & Resume feature is extremely important when you need to compress a long movie but cannot afford to have your computer completely occupied for long periods of time. It is also a good way to preview your movie before compression is complete.
Media Cleaner keeps track of where the compression was suspended and lets you resume
from where you stopped. You can even shut down and restart your computer, play back
the partially compressed movie, or compress another movie before resuming
compression on the suspended movie.
NOTE: While a suspended movie is watchable, it may not be flattened properly, so you shouldn't distribute suspended movies. If you don't wish to continue compressing a movie, and would like to distribute the suspended portion, process it again with the pre-configured QuickTime "Flatten Only" setting. You may also flatten a movie with the "Flatten and save..." option in the File menu.
NOTE: If your computer crashes or is shut down during a running compression without the movie being suspended first, the partially compressed movie will be lost and you will have to restart the compression from the beginning.
Media Cleaner also lets you suspend more than one movie at a time. With two or more movies suspended you can resume compression on whichever you choose.
NOTE: You cannot suspend a movie during
the "Flattening" part of the processing - once
Media Cleaner starts flattening a movie, it must
finish this process.
Media Cleaner will resume from the last keyframe compressed, not the last delta frame. This may cause your compression to resume a little before the point in the movie where you suspended compression. Media Cleaner does this to prevent extra keyframes from being added at the suspend/resume points in the movie.
NOTE: If you are making a movie with no keyframes, Media Cleaner may have to resume the compression from the beginning of the movie.
The "Resume" button is inactive if the
current movie or batch has not been previously suspended.
Because of this, Media Cleaner will always use the original settings a movie was compressed with when resuming a compression.
If you wish to change your settings, you must press "Start" instead of "Resume" this will start over with the new settings.
NOTE: You cannot change settings in the
middle of a compression. This is different than
in previous versions of Cleaner.