4.5

66Compressor User Guide
Cropping and padding
Customize the final cropping, sizing, and aspect ratio using the Cropping & Padding
properties in Compressor. Cropping removes video content from an image. Padding
scales the image to a smaller size while retaining the output image’s frame size. For more
information about these properties, see Intro to modifying frame size in Compressor.
• Cropping: Use this pop-up menu to set the dimension of the output image. The custom
option allows you to enter your own image dimensions in the fields; other options use
predetermined sizes. The Letterbox Area of Source menu item detects image edges
and automatically enters crop values to match them. This is useful if you want to crop
out the letterbox area (the black bars above and below a widescreen image) of a source
media file.
• Padding: Use this pop-up menu to set the scaling of the output image while retaining
the output image’s frame size. The custom option allows you to enter your own scaling
dimensions in the fields; other options use predetermined dimensions.
Quality
The following properties provide instructions for image analysis used by Compressor,
including frame resizing, clip retiming, and deinterlacing:
• Resize filter: This pop-up menu sets the resizing method. There are several options:
• Nearest Pixel (Fastest): Samples the nearest neighboring pixel when resizing an
image. This option provides the fastest processing time, but it is more likely to
show aliasing artifacts and jagged edges.
• Linear: Adjacent pixel values are averaged using a linear distribution of weights. This
option produces fewer aliasing artifacts than Nearest Pixel, with a small increase in
processing time.
• Gaussian: Adjacent pixel values are averaged using a Gaussian distribution of
weights. This option provides a medium trade-off between processing time and
output quality.
• Lanczos 2: Adjacent pixel values are averaged using a truncated sinc function. This
option is slower than Gaussian but provides sharper results.
• Lanczos 3: Similar to Lanczos 2 but averages more pixel values. This option is slower
than Lanczos 2 but may produce better results.
• Bicubic: Adjacent pixel values are averaged using a bicubic function. The processing
time and output are most similar to Lanczos 2 and Lanczos 3.
• Anti-aliased (Best): Provides the highest output quality, but can take substantially
longer to process.
• Retiming Quality: This pop-up menu sets the retiming method. There are four options:
• Fast (Nearest Frame): Interpolates frames linearly using nearest neighbor frames.
• Good (Frame Blending): Blends neighboring frames using a filter to produce good-
quality interpolation.