Introducing New Sorenson SQUEEZE 9 — 1.5 Years in the Making

At NAB 2013, Sorenson announced the launch of new “Squeeze 9? — the first major “point” release in nearly 1.5 years. A lot of creativity and good old-fashioned blood, sweat and, yes, even perhaps some tears went into this one. But, its inspiration — and the overall new features and significant improvements — came directly from you and your feedback over the past several months (which bubbled up via numerous channels, including our technical support team, sales team, proactive development outreach, user forums, conferences, briefings, press reviews and “bake offs,” analyst and press calls, etc. — you get the drill). The point is this — the significant enhancements to Squeeze 9 were not developed in a vacuum. And, hopefully that shows. You be the judge.

Over the years, you have voted Squeeze consistently as being the go-to video encoder/transcoder for video professionals everywhere. It is the most award-winning product in its class — winning 6 consecutive coveted Streaming Media “Readers’ Choice” awards. In new Squeeze 9, our over-arching goal is to streamline your overall workflow. To simplify. To take-away encoding/transcoding pain points. To make encoding/transcoding as invisible as possible so that you, our customers, can get back to what matters most — your craft of creating and distributing the most powerful, beautiful and impactful videos possible.

That is Squeeze 9's central theme. So, how did we do it? Here are some of Squeeze 9's headline features (which are explained in even more detail in today’s press release):

(1) A significantly streamlined, enhanced, and aesthetically pleasing overall UI and UX — in fact, Squeeze 9 marks the first significant UI/UX enhancements since Squeeze 6 over 3 years ago; BUT, importantly, we did not make changes simply for “change” sake; nor did we overhaul the user experience/workflow that you have come to know and love. Rather, you will see that the UI’s fundamental structure has remained intact — it is the execution of those elements that is different. That means the color palette is more pleasing. That means that the UX is more intuitive. It is clearer — it is cleaner (less cluttered). We made these changes based on extensive usability testing and feedback (maybe even yours). And, it seems like we got it right. Every single press briefing in advance of this launch reacted extremely favorably during live demos;

(2) New industry-first HTML5 optimized encoding to simplify multi-screen video. One HTML5 preset creates a single “squeezed” file that plays nicely, natively and intelligently in all major browsers. All of them. That means no more worries about iOS devices not playing nicely with Flash files, among other things. Again, this innovative significant feature was received extremely favorably in essentially all of our pre-launch press briefings and demos;

(3) Higher quality — yes! Always a priority here for us here. We always have been recognized as being the best — and we fully demand from ourselves that we retain that title. And, you, our users, tell us that you can never have too much quality. So, we have now integrated new and better codec packs — for H.264 and AVCHD 2.0 video — we also have more optimized presets (encoding recipes) than ever before;

(4) Faster speed. Much! Like quality, you and other video professionals can never have enough speed. After all, it ain’t fun watching your workstation be tied up with encoding/transcoding when, instead, you could be creating great video (and billing out for your creative services). That’s real money. That’s real opportunity cost. That’s why being the fastest desktop software encoder is a top priority for us. So, Squeeze 9 is over 2X faster on average than Squeeze 8. And, according to outside industry expert Jan Ozer — and his independent testing — our encode times already were up to 6X faster than competitor products. That was even before further speed enhancements in Squeeze 9 (including integration of more efficient codecs);

(5) Closed captioning — by popular demand. Many of you wanted it, nay needed it. For our broadcasting customers, it is essentially mandatory at this point. So, we have it — integrated seamlessly into the overall workflow;

(6) New video stitching — yet another critical requested feature. Now, Squeeze 9 enables you to easily add pre- and/or post-roll video to create a single stitched file; think about the marketing benefits here for you. Now, as one use case, a branding pre-roll can be added at the front of your job;

(7) Better time-code options — this too was important to many of you. Among other things, now, for the first time, you can take full advantage of timecodes from source files (in addition to timecode pass-through);

(8) Enhanced “Review & Approval” — this is a powerful feature that continues to be unique to Squeeze — and which has become a central feature that many of you have come to know and love. Now, this functionality is even snappier — with lots of improvements under-the-hood. And, as always, an integrated Sorenson 360 account — and 5 GB of storage — come free of charge as part of the overall Squeeze 9 purchase price.

Lots lots more too. But, check it out yourself. As always, you can try new Squeeze 9 free of charge. And, when you do buy, you have a full 30-day 100% money-back guarantee if you are not absolutely satisfied.

Sorenson Squeeze 9 is available in LITE, Standard, Pro and Premium versions now at Videoguys.com