Apple Compressor provides a great way of exporting Dolby Vision files. It provides a much wider range of encoding options than are available with the standard options in Final Cut Pro. It can also be particularly useful if your NLE does not support Dolby Vision directly as it can enable decoding of Dolby Vision captures to other formats such as ProRes. 

This article provides an overview about:

• Minimum OS and software requirements for encoding Dolby Vision
• Using in-built settings to encode Dolby Vision
• Key options for configuring custom settings or modifying in-built settings when encoding Dolby Vision
• Other uses for Apple Compressor in Dolby Vision 8.4 workflows

Minimum OS and software requirements for encoding Dolby Vision

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

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


 

Using in-built settings to encode Dolby Vision

There are a range of in-built settings within Apple Compressor where each setting contains a range of properties that are needed to configure a transcoding operation. For more details on the use of settings within Apple Compressor see View and modify a setting’s properties in Compressor on the Apple Support website.

A number of these in-built settings can be used either directly, or with minor changes to encode Dolby Vision. 

The simplest setting to use is the Apple Devices > Apple Devices 4K (HEVC 10-bit, HLG, Dolby Vision 8.4) setting. With the default properties this will automatically match frame rate and resolutions setting to your source video or project, and will create a Dolby Vision 8.4 file.  You can also choose to modify the selected properties from their default values.  For example, if you wish to downconvert 4K video to 1920x1080, you can adjust the ‘Frame size’ property.

However, certain useful properties are not available when you choose an Apple Devices setting. For example, it is not possible to configure the data rate when using this setting, so other settings such as ‘Video Sharing Services > 4K’ may be useful. You may also choose to configure custom settings by starting with the ‘New setting…’ option.  Choosing either ‘MPEG-4’ or ‘Quicktime Movie’ will provide the widest range of properties to configure. 


 

Key options for configuring custom settings or modifying in-built settings when encoding Dolby Vision

There are many properties you may wish to adjust from the defaults in order to adjust the output file configuration.  The following properties are the ones that are particularly critical to for Dolby Vision encoding and the available list is based on the configuration of ‘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 P8.4 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 8.4 file.

Color Space

• This should be set to ‘Rec. 2020 HLG’.  This ensures that the correct color space and transfer function for a Dolby Vision 8.4 file is selected.  However, if you have already enabled ‘Include Dolby Vision 8.4 Metadata’ Compressor will have selected this color space choice automatically.  Similarly, if you change this setting to another value, Dolby Vision metadata will be disabled so it’s important to leave this setting as ‘Rec. 2020 HLG’. 

Profile

• This should be set to ’10-bit’ as all Dolby Vision 8.4 files are 10-bit.  This property behaves in a similar manner to the Color Space property in that if you have already enabled ‘Include Dolby Vision 8.4 Metadata’ Compressor will have selected 10-bit automatically.  But if you change this back to ‘8-bit’ Dolby Vision encoding will be disabled.

 

Encoder type

• With either available value for this property you will encode a valid Dolby Vision 8.4 file.  However, if you select 'Faster (standard quality)' for the 'Encoder type' Compressor will use hardware accelerated encoding which is many times faster than the default software encoding. Hardware acceleration for 10-bit HEVC encoding is available on recent Apple Macs. 

Other uses for Apple Compressor in Dolby Vision 8.4 workflows

Beyond encoding of Dolby Vision 8.4 files, Apple Compressor is a really useful tool for converting files for other requirements related to Dolby Vision workflows.
 

Converting Dolby Vision captures from an iPhone

Compressor supports transcoding of Dolby Vision files to other formats. So if you would like to use your Dolby Vision files with NLE or color grading software that does not support the import of Dolby Vision 8.4 files directly, you can use compressor to provide this conversion.

When adding a Dolby Vision 8.4 file to a Compressor batch, you can check that you have a valid Dolby Vision file and that Compressor is identifying this correctly by checking the Job Inspector after selecting the Job, by clicking on the video’s icon or name in the center of the screen. Dolby Vision files will be labelled Dolby Vision 8.4 in the Inspector window along with the other key properties.



When adding the file to the batch, you can choose whichever settings, for example ‘ProRes > Apple ProRes 422’ you require to create a suitable file you can import into your NLE or Color Grading software.

 

Creating an HDR10 or SDR version

Apple Compressor can also be used to create various versions of deliverables from a Final Cut Pro project or another source or master file.  While there are other options, one simple method is to create custom settings within Compressor and in those settings select either Rec. 2020 PQ (for HDR10) or Rec. 709 (for SDR) for the output.