Permute Preferences
Permute contains a few preferences that allows you to customize the workflow. They are split into several categories.
General
Here, you can set settings about the CPU usage, file destination, etc.
Note: Options to put computer to sleep when done and to save converted files in the same directory as the original are only available in non-AppStore versions of Permute. See chapter about the difference between AppStore and non-AppStore builds.
Presets
Permute comes with dozens of different presets that simply work out of the box. If you are a more advanced user, you may want to tweak a thing or two here, or even create your own custom preset. You can also disable presets that you don't use.
Both video and audio qualities offer several quality settings. The higher the setting, the larger the resulting file and the less possible artefacts can appear in the result. Please test this out with Medium first which is optimal for an average user. Settings above this setting may produce unnecessarily large files and the conversion takes longer to finish.
- Keep Quality - this is a very high-quality setting that only professionals should be using. Permute will max out everything in order to preserve as much quality as possible.
- High - Permute automatically determines the bitrate values for the resulting file so that the quality is high. Use this setting only if you plan on further editing the file or if you think that the Medium setting is too low based on the results.
- Medium - Permute optimally balances quality and file size. Unless you plan to do some further editing on the file, this setting is most likely fine for you.
- Low - lower bitrates are used which results in faster conversions at the expense of quality. Use this e.g. if you need files converted for watching them just once on a plane.
- Custom - specify your own bitrates, framerate, constrain sizes, etc. Note that this is an advanced option and not all combinations of these settings need to work.
- Copy Track - Permute will not re-encode the track, but will copy it (passthru). This is a very advanced setting which is not recommended unless you are certain about your input files' formats.
Permute also includes several presets that are considered advanced and should only be used if you know what you're doing:
- Remux - this preset will copy video and audio tracks into a different video container. The conversion will fail if the target doesn't support input formats.
- Remux With Audio Conversion - same as above, except that the audio track is re-encoded.
- Crop - this allows you to crop the video. It requires precise settings, however.
- Web Optimization - this preset will move the MooV atom of a MP4 file to the front which enables playback of a partially loaded file. This preset will fail with non-MP4 files.
iTunes
Permute can automatically add the resulting file to iTunes. These options can be set up here.