Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Motion & Video => Topic started by: Kevin Gallagher on May 03, 2013, 07:19:11 am
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I'm presently using the Apple product and the lack of speed is killing me. Has anyone here tried Squeeze? I did a search and didn't see much mention of it here. Kinda wondering what an additional $750.00 buys you.
Thanks, Kevin in CT
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Compression that is not hardware accelerated (Matrox & others) is generally a tradeoff between quality & speed. Compressor works extremely well - albeit slowly. I have used Squeeze and do not like it since it neither buys additional speed nor quality IMO.
For fast H264 encoding, buy a dedicated box or card from Matrox (http://www.matrox.com/video/en/products/mxo2_le_max/) to use with Compressor.
For software-only encoding, my choice is Episode (http://www.telestream.net/episode/) with speeds faster than Compressor and almost equal quality.
Most of the compression applications have a horrible UI with the exception of Episode. Compressor is arguably the worst in this respect - Apple seems to have paid it no attention in about five years - but it still works if you can get past the clunky interface.
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I have to say I find Squeeze perfectly useable, OK I got it bundled with Avid, so didn't pay, but it serves me well, although I only really use it for H.264 encodes for client approval. There is a trial version, so why not suck it and see.
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Hi Chris, sadly, I can't use the Matrox stuff. My iMac isn't blessed with a thunderbolt port :( It does seem like a great solution though. FWIW I do OK with the Compressor 4 interface :)
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I have to say I find Squeeze perfectly useable, OK I got it bundled with Avid, so didn't pay, but it serves me well, although I only really use it for H.264 encodes for client approval. There is a trial version, so why not suck it and see.
Great idea thanks!
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Hi all, for what it's worth I stumbled on to this Free little tutorial on video compression basics, the author compares several compression programs and gives his opinion on their strengths and weaknesses.
https://www.udemy.com/videocompression101/ (https://www.udemy.com/videocompression101/)
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If you want to make .H264 deliverable, what's most used in broadcast (and not only here according to what I've been reading in the Red forum)
is the Sorenson Squeeze and MainConcept H264
But it's not cheap, unless you bought an Avid license.
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for H264 there is also this affordable USB-based Hardware solution: http://www.elgato.com/video/turbo-264-hd
I've once seen it in action with a colleague and it is indeed very fast (compared to pure software transcoding) and the quality is really, really good.
Personally I do use Sorensen Squeeze for H264 transcoding since the MainConcept H264 Codec & Squeeze preserve consistent colors and tonal values (same here: it's bundled with Avid MC, so I didn't have to pay for it).
I would also recommend iffmpeg (which is of course based on ffmpeg and uses x264) ... but it's Mac only: http://www.iffmpeg.com/
It fully supports Multi Core utilization on Mac and therefore it's pretty fast.
I am sure there are also sophisticated ffmpeg softwares for Windows...
ffmpeg has matured over time and I wouldn't hesitate to use it even for professional purposes (I do use iffmpeg to transcode my AVCHD MTS files to DNxHD 10bit or to ProsRes HQ 10bit before editing).
Another option is x264 codec in conjunction with MPEG Streamclip (freeware).
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I have to say I find the price of Squeeze outrageous. For anyone considering paying 799, you might as well pay 999 for Avid and get the Squeeze bundle plus a pretty decent NLE. For those on a budget I'd second the suggestion of looking at ffmpeg and its variants.
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I have to say I find the price of Squeeze outrageous. For anyone considering paying 799, you might as well pay 999 for Avid and get the Squeeze bundle plus a pretty decent NLE. For those on a budget I'd second the suggestion of looking at ffmpeg and its variants.
Sorenson medias is a "standart" in major broadcast
Teevees for the task it's been made and they
Have responsive tech support.
It's not really a product thought for indy structure
Where there are solutions that work very well
For free Or little money.
When I did my avid training on the national teevee,
I realised how the concept of expensiveness is very
Relative. Nobody talks about money there, but about support.
Imo, squeeze has a price and service that reflect its target.