Well I finally gave up on Apple's Compressor as it has just gotten flakier and flakier as time goes on. Not sure what Apple did to the software but even after a clean install, the thing went south in two weeks on a brand new, fully updated Octo Core.
I've been looking at Telestream's Episode for a while as some other shops I work with use it and love it. Well after one more aggravating failure from Compressor, I pulled the trigger today and added Episode Pro. Geez, what in the heck was I waiting for?! This thing is simple and has more options than Compressor ever did. AND I don't have to set up that stupid "Q Master" virtual cluster deal that never seems to work correctly. Episode just automatically works off all cores on the Mac Pros.
The biggest thing I now have is Flash encoding right in the same application so I don't necessarily have to use Adobe's Media Encoder (and it's flaky behavior). So now in one batch I can pretty much compress my original Quicktimes to whatever the heck the client wants.
The big difference between Episode and Episode Pro are the ability to batch more than 25 items at a time (Pro) and some additional higher end codecs (Pro). If you don't need those extra features, just go with Episode. I gotta say, I'm done with Compressor after just one day using Episode.
Run, don't walk, to Telestream's site and download the trial version now to see for yourself.
http://www.telestream.net/episode/overview.htm
