Sorenson Media is now shipping three new video encoding software applications — Sorenson Squeeze 3 Compression Suite, Sorenson Squeeze 3 for Macromedia Flash MX and Sorenson Squeeze 3 for MPEG-4. The company showcased the products earlier this month at the Macworld Conference & Expo in San Francisco.
Sorenson Squeeze is a video compression tool designed for both novice and professional content creators. It allows users to encode and deliver QuickTime media for streaming and progressive downloads. Squeeze offers two-pass VBR and fast-pass VBR and audio VBR for MP3 encoding. The former produces higher-quality video than standard compression with only slightly more processing time. The latter reduces processing time to non-VBR standards, while delivering only slightly lower quality than two-pass VBR compression.
In order to overcome video file length restrictions for video playback within the Macromedia Flash Player 6, Sorenson Squeeze for Macromedia Flash MX lets you encode longer video files by creating “stitched” SWF files for smooth continuous play. Stitched output files can then be served centrally from any Web server.
Sorenson Squeeze for QuickTime includes the Sorenson Video 3 Professional codec. With Squeeze, QuickTime media is compressed to a fraction of its original size (which allows for more media on local and portable storage devices) and is streamed across the Internet at less expense, according to Sorenson.
Electronic and box versions of Sorenson Squeeze 3 for the Mac and Windows platforms are currently available for purchase online at the Sorenson Web site. The estimated street price of Sorenson Squeeze 3 Compression Suite is US$449. Sorenson Squeeze 3 for Macromedia Flash MX costs $119, and Sorenson Squeeze 3 of MPEG-4 is $199. Upgrade pricing is available for current users of most Sorenson Media products.