Apple Compressor is a great addition to Final Cut Pro's export features, offering a more comprehensive set of encoding options than the default options in Final Cut Pro. 

It can also be used as a standalone desktop encoder if your NLE does not support rendering in Dolby Vision.

This article provides an overview about:

• Minimum operating system and software requirements for Dolby Vision encoding.
• Using built-in settings for encoding Dolby Vision
• Important options for configuring custom settings or changing built-in settings when encoding Dolby Vision
  
  

Minimum OS and software requirements for Dolby Vision encoding

Dolby Vision encoding support is available when running

• Apple Compressor version 4.5 or above
• macOS 11.0 (Big Sur) or above – although some earlier versions feature Dolby Vision decoding

 

Using Compressor for Dolby Vision encoding

 

* You can view this video in Dolby Vision on selected Apple devices when using the Safari browser. For more details see the Dolby Vision for Social Media - FAQs.


 

Using built-in settings for Dolby Vision encoding

There are a number of built-in settings in Apple Compressor, and each setting contains a number of properties that are required to configure a transcoding operation. For more details about using settings in Apple Compressor, see View and modify a setting’s properties in Compressor on the Apple Support website.
A number of these built-in settings can be used to encode Dolby Vision, either directly or with minor modifications.

The simplest setting is to use the setting: Apple Devices > Apple Devices 4K (HEVC 10-bit, HLG, Dolby Vision 8.4). The default properties automatically adjust the frame rate and resolution settings to match your source video or project and create a Dolby Vision file.  You can also change the selected properties from their default values.  For example, if you want to downconvert a 4K video to 1920x1080, you can adjust the ‚Frame Size‘ property.

 

However, certain useful properties are not available when you select an Apple Devices setting. For example, it is not possible to configure the data rate when you use this setting, so other settings such as ‚Video Sharing Services > 4K‘ can be useful. You can also configure custom settings by using the "New setting…’ option. Selecting "MPEG-4" or "QuickTime Movie" provides the widest range of properties you can configure.

 

Important options for configuring custom settings or changing built-in settings when encoding in Dolby Vision

 There are many properties that you may want to change from the default settings to customize the output file configuration. The following properties are particularly important for Dolby Vision encoding and the available list is based on the configuration of the "QuickTime Movie" settings.


 

Codec

• This should be set to ‘HEVC’. If the codec is not set to ‘HEVC’ some of the other important properties will be greyed out as Dolby Vision requires the video to be encoded as HEVC.

 

Include Dolby Vision 8.4 Metadata

• This option must be enabled and is the 2nd key parameter to ensure that the output is a Dolby Vision file.

Color Space

• This should be set to "Rec. 2020 HLG". This ensures that the correct color space and transfer function is selected for a Dolby Vision file. However, if you already have "Include Dolby Vision 8.4 metadata" enabled, Compressor has automatically selected this color space.  If you change this setting to any other value, Dolby Vision metadata is disabled. Therefore, it is important that you leave this setting at "Rec. 2020 HLG".

Profile

• This setting should be set to "10-bit" because all Dolby Vision encoded files are 10-bit. This is similar to the Color Space setting: If you have already enabled the Include Dolby Vision 8.4 Metadata option, Compressor has automatically selected 10-bit.  However, if you change this setting back to 8-bit, Dolby Vision encoding is disabled.

 

Encoder type

• Both available values for this option encode a valid Dolby Vision 8.4 file. However, if you select "Faster (Standard Quality)" for the "Encoding Type," Compressor uses hardware-accelerated encoding that is many times faster than standard software encoding.