Telestream — makers of the Flip4Mac software that enables you to view Windows Media Player (WMP) files using QuickTime — have introduced the Episode Series — a line of desktop media encoding software for Mac OS X. The series includes Episode and Episode Pro, as well as a Flash 8 option, and is available for $398 and $895 respectively (the Flash 8 option adds $100 more to either package).
Episode is the first product to emerge from Telestream’s acquisition early this year of Popwire, a developer of video encoding software. In fact, users of Popwire’s Compression Master software are entitled to a free upgrade to Episode.
Episode lets users encode video content for Web, DVD and portable devices, including video iPod, Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) and mobile phones. The software includes support for High Definition (HD) input and output and optimized codecs and filters for MPEG-1, 2 and 4, Windows Media 9, DV, 3GPP/2, M4A, MOV, other QuickTime codecs and more.
It supports multi-pass encoding for H.264, WMV, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and H.263 video, auto-batch encoding, and audio filters like balance, channel mixing, fade in/out, five-band EQ, high pass/low pass filters and audio normalization.
Video filters allow you to burn in time code, restore black and white, adjust contrast, fade, gamma correction, HSV levels, RGB filter, sharpen, smoothing, visible watermark, resize, de-interlace, fade in/out, inverse telecine and noise reduction.
Episode Pro adds pro format support for MXF, GXF, H.264 High Profile and more, surround sound encoding and other features.
Episode is a Universal binary for Intel and PowerPC-based Macs. System requirements call for a G4, G5 or Intel-based Mac, 512MB RAM, Mac OS X v10.4 or later and QuickTime 7.