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MillimeterSorenson Media Squeeze 6 Test Drive
Nov 23, 2009 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
Back again on Sorenson Media Squeeze 6. My video review from last issue provides a high-level workflow overview and details the new features. In this review, I'll focus primarily on quality and performance.
One very significant caveat: During my tests, I found a bug that prevents Squeeze from producing VP6 files to anywhere close to my target data rate. For example, I dialed in 500kbps and Squeeze produced a file that was 3Mbps. Sorenson is aware of this problem and will release a patch "very soon" after the Thanksgiving holiday. Obviously, I couldn't test either VP6 encoding performance or encoding speed.
Here, I'll present platform-specific results for Windows and the Mac.
Figure 1. SD Windows H.264 encoding trials. Click the figure for a full-resolution display.
Windows quality comparisons
Quality is job number one for all batch encoding tools, and in the formats that I was able to test, Squeeze performed very well. Briefly, for SD tests, I used my standard SD test file, which contains about 42 different scenes, and encoded to 500kbps (468 video/32 audio) using two-pass VBR encoding. For HD comparisons, I used my standard 720p test file, with seven test scenes, encoded to a video data rate of 800kbps and audio data rate of 128kbps. I compared Squeeze 6 to Squeeze 5 and competitive programs on the Mac and Windows platforms: Adobe Media Encoder CS4, Telestream Episode Pro, and Microsoft Expression Encoder.
Figure 2. HD Windows Media Video encoding trials. Click the figure for a full-resolution display.
In SD H.264 Windows comparisons, Squeeze 6 was a clear improvement over Squeeze 5, besting Episode Pro and matching the quality produced by Adobe Media Encoder, which uses the same MainConcept codec as Squeeze. HD comparisons showed similar results.
In Windows Media Video (WMV) comparisons, Squeeze 6 produced quality similar to Squeeze 5, about the same as the Adobe Media Encoder, and noticeably better than Episode Pro, which also dropped frames during extremely high-motion sequences.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
