Sorenson Squeeze 8 Brings Video Encoding and Transcoding to Broad Market

Sorenson Media announced the immediate availability of Sorenson Squeeze 8, which adds enhanced functionality  to the company’s video encoding and transcoding application at a lower price point. In addition, the company has also introduced Sorenson Squeeze 8 Lite, which makes select features of Squeeze 8 accessible to prosumers at a reduced price.

Key additions to Sorenson Squeeze 8 provide users with the highest quality and greatest control in encoding and transcoding. These include: seamless Squeeze Server integration; adaptive bitrate encoding for new formats, x264 support and optimization; and enhanced GPU acceleration.

The new version’s seamless integration with Squeeze Server maximizes encoding and transcoding power for the enterprise and other high-volume users by enabling users to free up their desktop machines by offloading encoding jobs to a separate server. Squeeze Server enables secure video encoding behind a user’s firewall, and can run in any Windows-based server environment – including the Cloud.

A major improvement over Squeeze 7, this latest release now includes optimized performance for all three leading adaptive bitrate streaming platforms: Adobe Dynamic Streaming; Apple HTTP Adaptive Streaming; and Microsoft Smooth Streaming. The adaptive bitrate support automatically transcodes each individual video file into multiple, chunked segments in a full array of bitrates, organizes these segments into a folder, and delivers them to the specified destinations for playback on any device.

In addition to being the current quality leader for encoding using the MainConcept H.264 codec, Sorenson Squeeze 8 is one of the first commercial video encoding applications to include full support for the increasingly popular x264 codec. This new support opens thex264 codec in a way that has never been done before, employing an intuitiveuser interface, complete with in-product instructions that enable video professionals to easily adjust and optimize up to 48 major encoding parameters, including key frame rates, encoding modes and performance, to adapt the popular H.264 format to their needs and workflow.

Optimized for Squeeze 8, GPU acceleration using NVIDIA CUDA has become the best option for creating .mp4 proxy files in both speed and quality. CUDA encoding enables both faster encoding and video quality equal to video content encoded without GPU acceleration, including true to source black levels.

“Sorenson Squeeze 8 packs more punch than ever, in two versions with significantly reduced prices. It truly expands our tradition of innovation leadership in the encoding and transcoding arena – and of anticipating and meeting the needs of every type of user, from the individual to the enterprise,” said Randon Morford, Squeeze product manager for Sorenson Media. “The full product’s integration with Squeeze Server moves the most painful and time consuming encoding tasks to a separate server, freeing up the productive capability of the computer and allowing users to focus on more strategic tasks, while our x264 optimization tools provide greater control than ever over all the key encoding parameters of H.264.”