The Thanksgiving holiday may be ending, but I have four new treats for you this week; including - ta-DAH! A chance for audience participation! More on that in a few paragraphs.

To start, though, I spent my holiday doing a series of speed tests on the new Mac mini vs. a high-end iMac for video compression. The results surprised me - so much so, that I spent three days conducting 78 different speed tests using two different computers and three different software packages.

Why look at video compression? Because, unlike video editing, compression doesn't require a high-end GPU, it can be automated, and every video project requires compressing the master file into multiple deliverables. I've written a lot about compression over the years, but this is the most detailed test yet.

So, the first "Speed Test" article compares the 6-core Mac mini against a faster 4-core iMac. Whether you use Apple Compressor, Adobe Media Encoder or the open source ffMPEG, this article highlights the strengths of each computer. 

As I looked at the results, I realized that we could also use these two systems to compare performance and compressed file sizes created by Compressor, Media Encoder and ffMPEG. The reason we compress files is that we need to create the highest quality image with the smallest possible file size as quickly as possible. And, here, the results left my jaw on the floor. This was not what I expected - which is why it is the second "Speed Test" article in this series.

Plus, as a great way to start to the holiday season, I want to open the floor for audience participation. Apple just released version 10.4.4 of Final Cut Pro X. It has lots of nice features in it, but, as people who use it on a daily basis, it can always be better. So, my lead story is a series of suggestions on how to tweak the interface to improve usability. Not major features, but small things that will make using it more fun. I need you to add your suggestions. Then, I'll collect them all and pass them back to Apple. With luck, we might see some of these in the future.

Patrick, from Synchrimedia.com, sent me a note: " MovieCaptioner 6.0 is now available. This new version, available as a free upgrade, is now fully 64-bit, does not require QuickTime 7, adds a new caption preview window, now uses Apple's built-in spell-check, along with a host of new features that make creating captions more flexible and faster than ever." Here's the link to learn more.

Webinars return this week, with a look at the new features in Final Cut Pro X (v. 10.4.4). Registration to our live events is always FREE. Sign up here.

Thinking of webinars, today is the last day of our Black Friday sale - 25% off anything in our store (but not memberships). This is the first time I can remember that we are discounting our Final Cut Pro X training, along with all webinars. Order anything you want, then use the Coupon Code: 25black.

The Digital Production Buzz continues rolling along. Last week we presented "Holiday Favorites" - a collection of favorite interviews from the recent past. We talked with Norman Hollyn, Mark Harrison, Barbara Griffiths, Jim Malcolm, and, as always, James DeRuvo. It's a fun show - listen to it here.

That's it for this week - oh! I almost forgot, my fourth story this week looks at the new Noise Reduction effect in Final Cut. This article shows you how this works. OK, now I'm done. Finals are starting this week at school. I need to go write some tests. Chat with you next week. In the meantime, edit well .