Compressor.app supports creating presets for easy export settings. And Apple’s standard line is to add those presets (.settings file) to ~/Library/Application Support/Compressor. However, this is a crappy option for an educational setup where you have several users all using the same computers. You can’t ask students to be installing the settings files themselves (students are a special breed).
So, looking in that folder ~/Library/Application Support/Compressor, you’ll find some Aliases. Right clicking on “Other Workflows”, and saying “Show Original” will have you in /Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj. So, you can drop that .settings file in “Other Workflows” and have it show up for all users.
But better still, is that those will show up in FCP. You should be able to go to File->Share, and change “Apple TV” or whatever is selected to “Other” and select your Settings file.
The real magic is when you then make that setting visible for all your users, so they don’t have to select “Other” and find it. In Workgroup Manager, you should be able to create a MCX for com.apple.FinalCutPro, that has something like:
Always
-CKExportView (dictionary)
--CKExportViewMenuSettings (array)
---0 (string) /Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Other Workflows/My Settings.setting
---1 (string) /Applications/Compressor.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Other Workflows/My Settings 2.setting
Easiest way to do that is go into FCP, make the settings visible in Share, then import your com.apple.FinalCutPro.plist from ~/Library/Preferences, and remove everything but the CKExportView(LastTargets|MenuSettings|SelectionIndexes). The first and the last are data, and I’m not sure what those contain, but they seem to be needed.
Good luck. This should be a huge help to us here at work, since our video switcher is pretty picky about the videos it’ll play, and this will let people easily create videos formatted correctly.
