Review by Frank Petrie

Product: Sorenson Squeeze 6
Author:  Sorenson Media <www.sorensonmedia.com/>
Requirements: Intel-based processor; Mac OS 10.4 or later; 512 MB RAM; 120 MB available hard drive space; QuickTime 7.2 or later
Price:  $799.00US; Squeeze 6 for Flash $499US
Test Rig: MacBook Pro 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 5GB RAM

For all of you videographers, I think you will agree that the most tedious part of the whole process is encoding your project. Sorenson has long been the high watermark, but this time they have outdone themselves with Squeeze 6.

“Free yourself from mundane tasks and your desk. We feel your pain, we’re here to help. With Squeeze 6, your workflow just got easy: Set it and forget it! Leave your desk and get back to what matters most — your videos, your business, your life.”

Let’s take a look around.

THE JUICE

The first thing that you will notice is a streamlining of the interface. Everything is pretty much as it was but in a more compact package.

New features in Squeeze 6 include foremost, its speed gain. Sorenson claims that version 6 is five times faster than version 5. Squeeze is now integrated with such apps as AVID, Final Cut Pro, iMovie and QuickTime Pro. They have added a whole bunch of pre-processing filters and presets to choose from.

They’ve enhanced the quality of H.264 and Flash, producing astoundingly crisp and detailed pictures. In fact, they have a decent choice of video and audio encoders. Squeeze 6 automatically publishes to Sorenson 360, YouTube, Twitter, Akamai, Limelight and many more

You have multiple encoding, which you can than publish directly from within the application. “Squeeze 6 automatically publishes to Sorenson 360, YouTube, Twitter, Akamai, Limelight and many more.”

THE PULP

Now, I didn’t run any numbers, but the speed has most definitely improved greatly. One of my midcoasts that used to take roughly 12-14 hours to encode, now takes approximately 4-5 hours. and if you’re rendering a batch of recordings, that’s a lot of time that you have gotten back.

To be honest, I haven’t had a chance yet to try Sorenson’s 360º publishing service. It is fee based but you get to use it for one year free of charge, so I’m in no rush.

With all of the great features that come with SS6, the one that I appreciated the most was Notification. Now, in my case I only have myself to notify when encoding is done. But that feature allows me to get up and get away from my computer, yet still allows me to keep up-to-date as to the progress of my encoding. When it’s completed, I can set it up to notify me by either e-mall or text message.

But if you’re working with a group, then the feature becomes invaluable. You can begin the encoding process but upload it to a shared folder and then have every one involved notified when it’s completed. They’ll be able to access the file without you even being near your machine! They can review your work and send you any necessary feedback, all while you’re away from your desk!

The piece of mind and amount of time that I now save is priceless.

THE RIND

Nada.

SUMMARY

Sorenson Squeeze is a high-end application. And it delivers on every promise. And then some.

It has streamlined publishing and coding automation to the point that it is no longer a chore! Now, encoding has become one of the less stressful and least time consuming processes in my video production workflow.

Now if I only could afford that three-chip CMOS camera

RATING : 10 out of 10

©2009 Frank Petrie