This morning, the folks at Sorenson Media announced the release of Sorenson 9. I had a chance to chat with them a few days beforehand to get their take on the new version.
The latest version of Squeeze sports several major changes:
HTML5 OPTIMIZATION
In the old days, like, say, last year, it seemed like all browsers would finally support the same codecs and video compression. Sigh… Such naiveté. Now, it is almost impossible for the same file with the same compression to be played across all browsers.
That’s where Squeeze’s HTML5 optimization comes in. When you apply this preset, Squeeze will compress your source file into two different formats – MPEG-4 and WebM – then write the HTML code that allows your browser to determine which file to play that is appropriate to the browser the user is using.
This is very cool – because it means we no long need to write file-specific HTML code just to get our videos to play. Or, worse, not have our videos play in all browsers.
REFINED INTERFACE
This version sports a redesigned interface, the first major interface update since version 6.
Improvements include:
SPEED
Sorensen tells me that this version is twice as fast as version 8; which was the fastest version of Squeeze released to date.
What I especially like is “Stitching,” the ability to add videos before or after your main movie. As an example, you’ve created a movie, and want to add a short promo at the beginning and animated production credit at the end. Normally, you’d need to fire up your favorite video editor, combine all the elements, export the file, then recompress.
Now, you can combine all the elements during the compression process, without reediting anything. This also allows you to quickly create a variety of ad front-ends for the same source movie.
There’s also improved support for Sorenson 360 for review and approval, the ability to extract closed captions from the video and save them into a separate text file (in one of three different text formats), and many more.
For all the details, visit www.sorensonmedia.com.
Pricing ranges from $799 to $999, upgrade prices vary. Visit www.sorensonmedia.com/upgrades/ for the full list of upgrade pricing.
Sorenson has been compressing files for a long time. This version just made it faster, easier, and more fluid.
As always, I’m interested in your comments.
Larry
