Review: Sorenson Squeeze 9
Studiodaily by Barry Braverman
When it comes to managing and manipulating digital video, Sorenson Squeeze has been a reliable workhorse. That continues to be the case with the advent of Squeeze 9 Pro, the most significant revision to the transcoding tool since v6 over three years ago.
Among its notable new features, Squeeze 9 offers extensive HTML5 support. As creators of web video content, we understand how HTML5 today dominates the distribution landscape. The format incorporates a tag that allows native playback without resorting to an auxiliary player or plug-in like Flash. The HTML5 spec includes playout options at full-screen or at reduced sizes, so a tool like Squeeze that can handle the full display gamut is imperative. HTML5’s sophisticated algorithms in Squeeze 9 are linked to a single preset that can make the web video preparation process deceptively simple for most users.
Recognized for years as an all-purpose transcoder, Squeeze 9 has emerged now as a dominant web video transcoding tool. HTML5 support is still not found in two key competing products — Adobe Media Encoder and Telestream’s Episode. For video production, both AME and Episode are far more capable and robust, with the Adobe encoder offering support for umpteen mobile devices, DPX image sequences, and dozens of other popular video environments like TiVo and Vimeo. Episode Pro goes further in supporting the professional video community, implementing AVC-Intra and the Blackmagic codec among other high-end options in the latest v6.4 release.
Sorenson cites quality, not speed, as the company’s main impetus in crafting the Squeeze update, tweaking its own variations of H.264 and X.264. I recently revisited the speed versus performance paradigm in Squeeze 9 Pro, comparing its performance and output quality to Adobe Media Encoder CS6 and Telestream Episode. Even considering comparable quality and a similar size output file the speed advantage in Squeeze is still apparent, albeit less dramatically so in this case when treating particularly complex source files. read more...
| Check out these items featured in this post and available now at Videoguys.com. Click here for more Squeeze 9 upgrades | |||||||
 |
Sorenson Squeeze 9 Upgrade from Squeeze 6 or older $449.00 | |
Sorenson Squeeze 9 Standard $719.00 |  |
Sorenson Squeeze 9 Lite for Web Encoding $269.00 | ||
Leave a comment