Sorenson’s Squish Encodes User-Generated Video

Sorenson Media on Wednesday announced the release of Squish and the launch of its companion Web site, SquishNet. The new software is designed to help organizations integrate user-created video. It’s priced at $1 per user, 5,000 users minimum.

Squish is a Java-based application that runs within a Web page. It’s compatible with Mac OS X, and works with leading Web browsers including Safari and Firefox. It supports GIF, JPEG and PNG image formats, ASF, DV, Flash, MOV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and WMV video formats.

Features include automatic installation and frame-by-frame video preview, and can work by capturing a stream from a webcam or through a digital video camcorder. Once the input video is compressed, it’s published to the Web site hosting server. Encoding happens using the local CPU, and only the compressed file is uploaded, noted Sorenson.

SquishNet is a companion Web 2.0 application used as the server-side back-end to help companies that license the technology to host, organize, view and share that video content. It uses an embedded Adobe Flash-based video player and can be customized using Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) templates.